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ni.ACKMOUK LAKE, MONTANA 

Pliotoqrdjtii hi/ Srhlcrhlcn 



The Natural Style in 

LANDSCAPE 
GARDENING 



FRANK A. WAUGH 




BOSTON: RICHARD G. BADGER 

TORONTO: THE COPP CLARK CO., LIMITED 



COPTBIGHT, 1917, BT RiCHAED G. BaDGEB 



All Rights Reserved 



<< 



Printed in the United States of America 



The Gorham Press, Boston, U. S. A. 

JUL -2 1917 J'/ 



g)ClA.467684 



TO 

GEORGE A. PARKER 

LOVER OF THE LANDSCAPE 

AND 

LOVER OF MANKIND 



CONTENTS 



PAsa 
What Is Meant 11 

The Native Landscape 25 

Form and Spirit .48 

The Landscape Motive 64 

Principles of Structxjeai, Composition .... 74 

The Art of Grouping 92 

FeATUKES and FuRNISHINOe 120 

The Open Field 140 

Index 149 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

Mountain Scenery — Blackmore Lake, Montana . Frontispiece 

FACING PAGE 

Explorations Inland 18* 

The Meadow Brook 18*^ 

Sunlight in the Birches 22 

Pipes o' Pan 22' 

In the Rocky Mountains SO' 

A National Forest Landscape, Arizona . . . . 30' 

Pulling Over the Rapids 38' 

Informal Composition, Grounds of the Massachusetts 

Agricultural College 38 

In the Berkshire Hills 46' 

Early Springtime 60 

As Viewed from the Bridge 60' 

On Mount Toby, Massachusetts 70' 

Naturalistic Composition, Grounds of the Massachusetts 

Agricultural College 70- 

New England Country Road 78' 

"Going Fishing." The Country Road 78 

Naturalistic Composition, Back Yard Garden . . . 86 

A Natural Grouping of Trees 96 

Row of Trees Along the Pasture Fence . . . .100 

Old Apple Orchard 100' 

Walk Along Rock Creek, Washington, D. C. . . 106 
Chestnut Trunks. An Effective Grouping . . . . 106' 
Hillside Garden. Grounds of the Massachusetts Agri- 
cultural College 116 



Ust of Illustrations 



PACING PAGB 

A Garden Campfire. The Author's Garden . . . . 130' 

Mountain Trail 130 

Where Woods and Meadow Meet 142 



THE NATURAL STYLE IN 
LANDSCAPE GARDENING 



THE NATURAL STYLE IN LAND- 
SCAPE GARDENING 



WHAT IS MEANT 



ALL the older men and women now living 
whose recollections of garden matters run 
back, say into the seventies, will remember 
the violent controversy then raging between the 
advocates of the formal garden on the one side 
and of the natural style on the other. Those were 
days of violent partizanship in all matters. In poli- 
tics and religion people were habitually intolerant. 
In certain families it was held that to vote the demo- 
cratic ticket was prima facie evidence of murder, 
arson, and embezzlement of funds. In other circles 
it was fully agreed that unless one were immersed 
into a particular church he would surely land in 
the eternal fires. Amongst people trained in this 
temper the ardent disagreements over garden style 
were perfectly natural and necessary. 



11 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

And, we ought to add, altogether bad. Though 
some theorists may argue that the modern man's 
lack of strong convictions is a weakness, it is per- 
fectly plain that the growth of tolerance, the broad- 
ening of view, the greater catholicity of taste in all 
matters, mark a very genuine advance. It is a 
great and genuine gain for the spirit of humanity. 

This change, which has marked all realms of 
thought, has been as effective in the field of land- 
scape gardening as anywhere else. To those of us 
who remember it, it has been equally agreeable. 

We may fairly claim to have achieved a full 
freedom in these matters. Every well-trained 
landscape architect in America designs freely in 
either the formal or the natural style, frequently 
using both styles in different parts of the same 
project. The ill-natured polemics of the seven- 
ties have disappeared altogether from the garden 
literature of the present day. 

This change has been wholly for good. I rejoice 
in every thought of it ; and as I take up now a dis- 
cussion of the natural style, my unwavering alle- 
giance to the modern Catholicism must be most em- 



12 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 



phatically declared. Thus when I find it necessary 
to praise the natural style, to allege some neglect 
of it, and to make some comparisons in its favor, 
these statements must not be taken to reflect ad- 
versely on any other style nor to indicate a partizan 
opinion. 

To trace fully the development of the idea of 
a natural style in gardening would be exceedingly 
interesting, but it would require a great deal of 
time and space. Fortunately a complete histori- 
cal review is not necessary to our present purposes. 
It is essential to observe, however, that the natural 
style has meant very different things at different 
times. Nearly every reformer has advertised his 
own work as more natural than his predecessors, 
or as a "return to nature." The garden of Eden 
is described as designed in the natural style. 

Batty Langley was one of the most interesting 
of these reformers, and it is worth while now to note 
what was his idea of the natural style. The plate 
used as an end paper in this volume, from his book, 
will show pretty clearly what he had in mind 
when he announced his "New Principles of Gar- 
is 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

dening: Or, The Laying out and Planting Par- 
terres, Groves, Wildernesses, Labyrinths, Ave- 
nues, Parks, &c., after a more Grand and Rural 
Manner, than has been done before." 

Another curious episode was the career of Laun- 
celot Brown — "Old Capability Brown," as his jeal- 
ous critics dubbed him. His contribution to the 
natural style was the discovery that "Nature ab- 
hors a straight line." Therefore away with straight 
lines. With a strong start in this direction it is 
easy to conclude that the further we get away from 
the straight line the nearer we get to Nature. So 
Brown made walks and drives and artificial water- 
courses so crooked that they lost their way. It was 
said that his walks tied themselves in true lovers' 
knots and that his made rivers often doubled and 
crossed their own courses. Brown made himself 
thoroughly ridiculous, but he illustrated one idea 
of the natural style, and an idea which has more 
recently and in a milder form had a distinguished 
hearing in America. 

After Brown arose a small group of doctrinaires 
who theorized that the only way to make a truly 



14 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 



natural composition was to copy it in detail from 
nature. The neglected moraine, the common stone 
heap and the untutored wayside copse became their 
patterns to be slavishly reproduced in their "gar- 
dens." Because broken, dead and blasted trees 
were found in the native woods these enthusiasts 
transplanted dead trees to their private parks. 
These extravagances, however, soon followed Laun- 
celot Brown's crooked line theory into the limbo 
of discarded jokes. 

The idea of making literal transcriptions from 
Nature has had a much greater and more interest- 
ing development elsewhere. What we know (and 
very vaguely understand) as the Japanese style 
of landscape gardening — a style which it appears 
originated in China — is founded precisely on this 
theory. The original idea was to copy certain clas- 
sic landscapes or landscape arrangements; and as 
these first oriental landscape gardeners were priests, 
and as their gardening was primarily for the em- 
bellishment of the temple grounds, their prime 
models were certain sacred landscapes, made sa- 
cred by association with other shrines. 



15 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

These sacred landscape arrangements were then 
reproduced in other localities, but, as in a drawing, 
to a scale considerably smaller than the originals. It 
was considered obligatory to preserve this reduced 
scale throughout the copy. Thus if the copy was 
at one-tenth the size of the original, each hill and 
each tree must be reduced in the same propor- 
tion. While obviously this theory has not been 
rigidly adhered to in all examples of Japanese 
gardening, it has been carried far enough to make 
most gardens seem very curious to occidental eyes. 
But the Japanese gardener sometimes asserts that 
his is the only natural style, and from his point 
of view he is just as nearly right as anybody else. 

In America there have been less radical but very 
plain differences of opinion as to what really con- 
stitutes a natural style. The idea which has had 
the widest vogue has certainly been the native flora 
cult. A very respectable number of very respecta- 
ble gardening persons (with perhaps the tender 
sex predominating) have made themselves quite de- 
lightful grounds with plants selected strictly from 
the local flora. Of course there have been some 



16 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

differences. One gardener would accept any spe- 
cies native to America; another insists on plants 
from his own state; the garden maker of real con- 
victions accepts nothing but what grows naturally 
on his own farm. 

My friend Dr. Wilhelm Miller in his recent cru- 
sade for "the Illinois way" represents a temperate 
recrudescence of this native plant propaganda. For 
it is a part of "the Illinois way" to use Illinois 
plants. The arguments for this way are largely 
the arguments for a natural style of gardening. 

Probably the majority of trained landscape ar- 
chitects when designing in the natural style employ 
a good many non-indigenous species. Their test 
is simply that a plant shall be effectively natural- 
ized. Their compositions are pictorial — made to 
appeal to the eye rather than to a botanical edu- 
cation. If a plant looks perfectly at home it is to 
all reasonable requirements natural. 

This seems to be a safe middle-ground. Cer- 
tainly he would be a hard theorist and an intoler- 
able puritan who would exclude the common lilac 
and the homely apple tree from his grounds simply 

17 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

because they are not native to America. It wouldn't 
be good democratic Americanism, either, for the 
great bulk of our citizens are derived from foreign 
stocks. 

The anti -straight-line theory as a fundamental 
element of the natural style seems to have been held 
by Downing and by Olmsted, Senior. It has been 
much emphasized by some of their followers; but 
careful designers have learned that simply to avoid 
straight lines and radial curves gets one nowhere. 
It certainly does not lead to naturalness. Indeed, 
it seems philosophically impossible to found any 
positive or constructive method on any purely 
negative dictum. 

In order to arrive at a perfectly clear conception 
of what we now mean when we talk among ourselves 
about the natural style, it seems best to consider 
more carefully what is meant by style in landscape 
gardening. It is one of the unfortunate vagaries 
of language that this term has assumed a special 
meaning in landscape gardening distinctly differ- 
ent from what it carries in other arts. In litera- 
ture, where this other meaning is clearest, style 



18 




EXPI.ORATIOXS IXLAXD 




THE MEADOW BROOK 

Photographs by the Author 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

signifies the personal peculiarities of the author. 
Mr. William Dean Howells has his style by which 
his work can be recognized, and David Grayson 
has his. 

In landscape gardening, on the other hand, styles 
are national — perhaps, more strictly speaking, ra- 
cial. The Japanese style embodies the garden char- 
acteristics of a whole race. The Italian style does 
the same. Every style which ever had a name was 
called by the name of the race or nation which prac- 
ticed it; and one of the questions now before the 
house is whether we shall ever have an American 
style. 

We may therefore define style, as used in this 
particular art, as being the expression of the na- 
tional, racial or ethnic quality in landscape garden- 
ing. 

But what of the natural and the formal styles 
of gardening? They do not bear national names, 
though they have been often and inaptly called the 
English and the Italian styles. The fact is that 
these are not styles at all in any strict use of lan- 
guage, but great garden forms. The formal form 



19 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardemng 

may be closely compared to poetry and the infor- 
mal form to prose. Each is a structural method of 
composition — a form. Poetry is one literary form ; 
prose is another. National or personal styles may 
be expressed through either of these forms. 

Up to this point, therefore, and subject to a very 
important addition later to be made, we may say 
that the so-called natural style is really a funda- 
mental garden form. It is a structural form char- 
acterized by certain resemblances to the natural 
landscape. These points of resemblance are some- 
times quite arbitrarily chosen by the garden de- 
signer, and sometimes quite artificially developed; 
but it is always the logical aim of the artist to 
discover and to follow the principles of composi- 
tion followed by nature. 

This structural form is distinguished further, in 
a purely negative manner, by contrast with the 
formal garden form, which is symmetrical, bal- 
anced, enclosed and determinate, whereas the in- 
formal form is unsymmetrical, not obviously bal- 
anced, not apparently enclosed and not marked by 
visible boundaries. 



20 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

(Our terminology here, where we speak of the 
formal form and the informal form, is execrable, 
but it is unavoidable, and the ideas are perfectly 
definite and logical.) 

Our partial definition of the so-called natural 
style of landscape gardening speaks of it in terms 
of form. But any vital style must have something 
more than form. It must also have a living, breath- 
ing spirit. Any form without spirit is dead and fit 
only for the crematory. 

What then is the informing spirit of the natural 
style? Is it not the spirit of the natural landscape? 
We speak of the spirit of the woods, or the spirit 
of the mountains ; and, quite as precisely as common 
language can ever convey spiritual ideas, we know 
what we mean. We do actually have a perfectly 
clear idea in mind when we speak of these things. 

The idea is not only clear, but valuable in the 
highest degree. Our spiritual ideas are always more 
important than our thoughts about materials; and 
it is more important to any man — ^much more im- 
portant — to know the spirit of the woods or the 
spirit of the plains or the spirit of the mountains. 



21 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

than to know the properties of benzine or the names 
of golf clubs or the uses of gunpowder. 

It is not difficult to see that this spirit of the 
landscape is different from the spirit of architec- 
ture. Thus any one who is capable of a spiritual 
conception of any sort can readily accept the prin- 
ciple that, while the formal garden should be ani- 
mated by the architectural spirit, the informal gar- 
den should live by the spirit of the landscape. 

We are all so much unaccustomed to thinking in 
spiritual terms, and the significance of this idea is 
so essential, that it will be well to spend a little 
more time upon it. For purposes of illustration 
let us imagine ourselves sitting on the pasture fence 
in the friendly sunshine of a warm June afternoon. 
Before us there spreads, let us say, the rolling green 
pasture lands, interspersed with scattered oaks, and 
in the midst a dimpling deliberate river. In the 
shade of the trees the well-fed cows rest and rumi- 
nate. Over all stretches the quiet blue sky, deep- 
ening to a purpling haze along the distant horizon 
as the afternoon wanes. It is a landscape which 
appeals to every physical sense. We rejoice to 




^\fe.. ,/:5lr//^?. 






SUNLIGHT IX THE BIRCHES 




PIPES O PAX 

Photographs hi/ the Author 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

be alive in it. 

But does it not appeal to other than our physical 
senses? Does it not touch some spiritual sense? 
As we, civilized human beings, sit there amidst 
the glory of that June landscape, do we appre- 
hend nothing but the physical landscape? What 
do we really see? Only the trees and the grass 
and the river? Only these? If that is really all 
we see then the good Jersey cow ruminating under 
the tree has a very substantial advantage over us. 
She sees the tree and the grass and the river; and 
besides that she sees a square meal. She crops the 
grass, drinks the water, retires to the shade of 
the tree and ruminates. 

Do we bring back from that fair landscape any- 
thing which we may ruminate ? If we really do suc- 
ceed in capturing something more than what the 
cow gets, that harvest must be a spiritual product. 
It is the spirit of the landscape. 

There may be men and women who get less from 
the landscape than the cow does. If there are, I 
am sure they will not admit it. So perhaps we 
may let the case rest there for the present. In a 



23 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

subsequent chapter we shall give more extended 
discussion to the meaning of the native landscape. 
This is in reality an endeavor to understand the 
landscape in spiritual terms, and thus to make more 
clear our full definition which is that the natural 
style of landscape gardening endeavors to present 
its pictures in forms typical of the natural land- 
scape and made vital hy the landscape spirit. 

In this connection it is essential to remember that 
a good deal of landscape art, and especially that 
which adopts the natural style, is not required to 
make every picture out of whole cloth. It might 
be more accurately described as intelligently let- 
ting alone a natural landscape. What does the wise 
landscape gardener do when called upon to treat a 
stretch of attractive natural scenery? He must, 
first and foremost, endeavor to understand the 
spirit of his landscapes. Then his work will be to 
simplify and accentuate the characteristic natural 
forms (chiefly topography and flora), and to clar- 
ify and interpret the spirit of the place. This clari- 
fication and interpretation of spiritual values is 
the real work of the real artist. 



24 



THE NATIVE LANDSCAPE 

WHETHER our foregoing definition of 
the natural style is adequate or defec- 
tive, it must be plain that any natural- 
istic style of landscape gardening is largely de- 
pendent on the native landscape. The ideas, mo- 
tives, and methods must come mainly from nature. 
Indeed, it would seem certain that any landscape 
architect of any school must know and love the 
landscape. Such knowledge and such sympathy 
would be fundamentally and absolutely necessary. 
Whenever the designer professes, however, to do 
his landscape gardening in the natural style, it 
would seem doubly incumbent on him to bring to 
his work a critical understanding of nature's land- 
scape and a love of the native landscape at once 
ardent, sane, discriminating and balanced. A mere 
boyish enthusiasm will not answer. It must be the 
true, tried and fixed love of maturity. 

Thus it becomes the first and perhaps the most 



25 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

important step in landscape gardening, especially- 
naturalistic landscape gardening, to know and to 
love the native landscape. Both knowledge and 
love are required. Can we, now, point out any- 
practical approach to the landscape? any way of 
understanding it better? especially any means of 
loving it more? Assuredly we can. 

At the outset we may gain some respect for the 
landscape by observing its power. It does exert a 
truly marvelous power upon the intelligence of 
men; and their feelings, which lie deeper, are even 
more profoundly affected. Common men love the 
landscape passionately. The attachment to home 
is largely the love of landscape. When the army 
of Cyrus, defeated and disheartened, came back 
from their long campaign in Persia, they fell do^n 
and wept when, from the top of a hill, they caught 
the first view of the sea. It was to them the land- 
scape of home. They were not especially suscepti- 
ble or responsive men — certainly not artists trained 
to the love of beauty. Human nature is still the 
same. Any man, no matter how dull, who has 
grown up amongst the hills of Vermont has, neces- 



26 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

sarily and positively, a deep love of that particular 
landscape in his heart. Let him be exiled for a 
few years in Texas or France or Chicago and 
then let him revisit the Green Mountains. His 
heart will leap up like a mother to her child. His 
emotions will be stirred to their profoundest depths. 
There is hardly a human experience anywhere of 
greater reach or power. 

This particular experience, while universal and 
known of all men, is somewhat provincial. Culti- 
vated men learn to love other landscapes than those 
to which they were born. A part of the value of 
landscape lies in its universality. The landscape is 
everywhere. The lover of books cannot always 
live in a library; the lover of music cannot find 
anywhere a perpetual concert; the lover of paint- 
ing cannot shut himself up in an art gallery; but 
the lover of the landscape has his joy always with 
him. Even the hater of the landscape, if there 
could be such a man, could not escape from it. 

Now since art is after all primarily the love 
and enjoyment of the beautiful, and since the land- 
scape is physically present to all people, and since 



27 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

it appeals powerfully to practically all people, we 
must regard it as the principal source in the world 
of esthetic joy. It is the world's principal reser- 
voir of beauty. It does more for the esthetic life 
of mankind than all the painting, sculpture, po- 
etry and architecture in all the world taken to- 
gether. This is a large claim, but it is a simple 
and obvious truth. 

For this reason we should all greatly reverence 
the native landscape, should seek to conserve it 
for human use and enjoyment, should endeavor to 
make it physically accessible to all, should try to 
make it intelligible to all, should work to open up 
for it the way to men's hearts. 

Let us take the case of the young man who pro- 
poses to become a landscape architect and who 
hopes to do some of his work in the natural style 
— or the informal form, if we prefer an exacter 
nomenclature. In his earnest desire to know and 
love the native landscape his first plain step will 
be to associate with it. He will go out with the 
landscape. He will spend hours, days and weeks 
with it. Instead of going to the bowling alleys, 



28 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

the billiard rooms, the dances and the movies, he 
will go to the hills, he will visit the lakes, he will 
follow the brooks, he will camp on the plains. All 
this is so simple, so obvious, so easy, that it needs 
only to be mentioned to be established as a fruitful 
means of landscape study. 

Of course the student will visit the landscape — 
no, he will live with it — with an open mind and 
heart. He will be trying to see what the landscape 
has to offer, trying to hear what it has to tell. He 
will look long, quietly, silently, intently at the hori- 
zon, or at the distant valley, or at the mountains. 
And most of all he will consciously seek their spirit- 
ual message. He will know that as a man it is ab- 
solutely obligatory upon him to see something in 
that landscape more than the cow sees. Whatever 
he gets beyond what the cow gets is the spiritual 
harvest of the landscape. It is the only part which 
is of any human use. 

In another place I have tried to extend the defi- 
nition of the landscape to include such items as the 
sky, and the weather. The man who is thus con- 
scientiously seeking the spiritual message of the 

29 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

landscape will look long and often at the sky. My 
own students are directed to spend frequent hours 
of solitude lying on their backs looking up into the 
depths of the heavens. 

This exercise should be practiced nights as well as 
days. The deep infinities of the sky are more visible 
when pricked out by the twinkling stars than when 
illuminated by the sun. The exercise should be 
used also in all weathers — when the sky is full of 
fresh falling snow or of pearly raindrops. For 
the landscape lover must love all aspects of the 
sky and all moods of the weather. 

While the fundamental psychological appeal of 
the landscape is universal, reaching to all men's 
hearts, there are differences in minor manifesta- 
tions. The landscape does not mean the same to 
everybody. The landscape, like religion or any 
other great experience, is "all things to all men." 

To the farmer the landscape is a part of the 
day's work. He plows and sows and harvests the 
landscape. If he is a true farmer his fields become 
inestimably dear to him. The sun, the wind, and 
the rain are his friends. He knows and loves them. 



30 




IX THE ROCKY MOUNTAIXS 





r#;.^ 



^S^ffi?^^^^^^-*^' ■■" 







A NATIONAL FOREST LANDSCAPE ARIZONA 

Photographs by the United States Forest Service 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

The forester lives in the woods. To him the 
landscape is full of trees. These are spread over 
rocky mountain sides and interspersed with friendly- 
brooks. So the landscape takes on for the forester 
a very special color and character. 

In America the pioneer has played a deeply sig- 
nificant role. There have been generations of pion- 
eers, from those who landed at Plymouth and 
Jamestown to those who settled the plains and 
captured the Oregon. This body of pioneers has 
moved forward across the continent from one ocean 
to the other with a slow, steady, indefeasible march. 
For more than 200 years their campfires lighted the 
way. Gieneration after generation of hardy men 
and women lived roughly in the open or sheltered 
by log huts or sod shanties. They lived very nea;r 
to the landscape. They loved it profoundly. Many 
of them loved it so deeply that they could not bear 
to share it with neighbors. As soon as the settle- 
ments arrived and the landscape was invaded and 
despoiled, the pioneers moved on. 

To understand anything of American history it 
is necessary to understand these pioneers, and to un- 



31 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

derstand them at all we must understand their love 
of the landscape. This element has had a wide- 
reaching influence in American life. 

This feeling, perhaps in a form of genuine hered- 
ity, shows itself frequently in the best established 
citizens in the midst of our most complicated mod- 
ern civilization. Men break away from big cities 
year by year and seek the wilderness. They go to 
the farthest solitudes. They spend the longest va- 
cations they can capture in hunting, fishing, tramp- 
ing. They find a fierce joy in the wilderness. The 
landscape to them means freedom. It means re- 
lease from a strenuous civilization which at best 
they find only partly good. 

All outdoor sports constitute more or less tem- 
porary release from civilization and a return to the 
landscape. Fox chasing, automobiling, fly fishing, 
and the entire list of outdoor recreations belong in 
this category. They are merely so many different 
ways of reaching the landscape. 

Even the more socialized competitive outdoor 
sports, such as baseball and football, are still out- 
door sports. The baseball game would be worth- 



32 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

less if it were not played under the open sky. The 
spectators on the bleachers must still look up and 
see the blue heavens even if the horizon is damned 
with a circle of painted signs advertising the worst 
brands of beer and tobacco. 

A more refined and lady-like approach to the 
landscape is found in gardening. Gardening as 
a polite domestic art is perhaps the most com- 
plete combination of civilization and the landscape 
which has yet been devised. If we press this on to 
the point where it becomes really landscape garden- 
ing it would surely deserve this description, for 
what could landscape gardening be except such a 
full and final fusion of the landscape with the social 
human artificial domestic garden? 

One who undertakes to study the native land- 
scape with any thoroughness should properly ap- 
proach the subject by studying the principal types 
of native landscape. It will not do simply to study 
the landscape in general. One must be more ana- 
lytic and specific. 

As a matter of fact most persons in their primary 
love of home found their love of landscape upon 



33 



The Natural Style in Landscape Garderving 

acquaintance with a particular type. The citizen 
of Cape Cod loves the sea and the dunes. The 
native of Nebraska loves the plains. The habitant 
of Quebec loves the woods, and the men bred 
amongst the mountains of Colorado must love the 
white-peaked Rockies. 

The man who really sets out to know and love 
the landscape, however, whether he be a student 
of landscape architecture or a mere citizen of the 
universe, will try to know different types of land- 
scape. He will seek to make the acquaintance of 
as many distinct types as possible. For this rea- 
son it is desirable to consider what are the princi- 
pal landscape types. 

It is reasonably accurate to say, though there is 
nothing scientific in the classification, that the four 
great types of landscape are the sea, the mountains, 
the plains, and the forests. These great types 
every one should know. Certainly every man who 
professes to be a landscape architect should assimi- 
late into his own life these fundamental landscape 
forms. 

The sea has always been a power in human 



34 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

thought. Its wide and infinite reaches, its constant 
motion, its vivid expression of power, its versatile 
changes, its human and super-human moods, its 
deHcate colorings, even its salty smell, make it so 
vivid that no human consciousness could possibly 
escape it. A mere glimpse of the sea must pro- 
foundly impress the most unsympathetic stranger. 
How deeply it affects those who live with it all 
history can tell. 

Likewise the mountains in their sublime alti- 
tudes are capable of moving men's hearts and 
minds to the utmost. They have a character of 
their own as much as the sea. Whole nations have 
lived with the mountains and drawn their character 
from them. 

To the man from a different environment the 
plains seem monotonous. Their wide expanse, 
their level horizon, do not make an instant impres- 
sion. Yet the men and women who live there know 
that this wide unbroken circle of horizon which the 
eye can barely reach, speaks to the mind always of 
infinity. Nothing could be wider and nothing could 
appeal more to the imagination. Nothing could 



35 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

assist more in the enlargement of humanity. When 
these wide plains are beautifully spangled with 
native flowers, when they are swept into billows by 
summer winds, when they are capped by rolling 
mountains of cloud, when they are ablaze with great 
prairie fires, when they take on any of their other 
native aspects they become tremendous, they pre- 
sent magnificent and tragic spectacles which leave 
the human mind as profoundly moved as it can ever 
be by the sea or mountains. Yes, the plains must 
always be reckoned as one of the great types of 
landscape. 

The forests are more friendly and familiar. 
There is more of the feeling of domesticity about 
them. It is a strange fact that in the early set- 
tlement of America pioneers who had their choice 
avoided the prairies and settled first among the for- 
ests, even though they were there compelled to clear 
away the trees with infinite labor to make fields 
for farming. The natural human love for the 
forest landscape needs nothing more than mention. 
It is worth while to recall, however, how this has 
been put to special use in such enterprises as the 



36 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 



"forest cure." It is well known that many sana- 
toria have been established in the forests and that 
thousands of men and women have found life and 
health simply in being exposed to the healing ui- 
fluence of the crowded trees. 

Besides these four main types of landscape, there 
are minor types of considerable importance. There 
are great rivers which throughout their entire 
courses completely dominate the landscape. They 
establish its character. Any one who is to know 
the landscape should know some of the great riv- 
ers and should have felt their spell. 

The little brooks too are well worthy of acquaint- 
ance. As they sing and gurgle down through the 
forests or roar down the mountainside, they too have 
a story to tell. It is a story to which every man 
and woman ought to listen. 

There are many sections of country which could 
not be called mountainous, but which are charac- 
terized by their rolling hills. Such hilly country, 
whether found in central New York, Missouri, or 
Bohemia, has a character of its own. It is neither 
plains nor mountains, but a kind of human com- 



37 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

promise. These hills are good to live with. They 
support large populations. They are mild and 
pleasant without being so tragic as the sea or moun- 
tains. For this reason they are psychologically 
better for daily human association. If one is a 
real lover of the landscape he will not seek always 
for the extreme and spectacular types. One of the 
greatest qualities in all art is restraint and the will- 
ingness to accept a moderate expression of feeling. 
This quality of moderation is expressed in the roll- 
ing hill country characteristic of wide sections on 
every continent. It is a type of landscape which 
has been too much neglected, — that is, there has 
been little attempt to understand its spiritual sig- 
nificance. 

In some districts the character of the landscape 
is taken from its lakes. One whole section of Eng- 
land is called the Lake Country. The magnificent 
territory bordering on Lake Champlain, whatever 
its topography and its other beauties, must ren- 
der chief homage to the incomparable lake. The 
lover of the landscape ought also to know some 
lakes. . >% 



38 




PITLLING 0\T:R the RAPIDS 

Photograph by the Author 




IXFORMAL COSrPOSITIOX. GROt-XDS OF THE JIASSACIIVSETTS AGRICULTURAL 
COLLEGE 

Designed and executed by the Author 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardemng 

Everywhere where men Hve the landscape has 
been more or less changed. Where considerable 
populations have become established the landscape 
is much subdued. The most fertile countries are 
fully developed in farming lands. In some places 
the forests have been cut away. In others the prai- 
ries have been obliterated. In place of forests and 
prairies there are now checkered fields of corn and 
wheat interspersed with orchards and pastures. 
This agricultural landscape, however, has an effec- 
tive appeal of its own. It is not unfair to say that 
it is quite as beautiful as the native landscape which 
it has supplanted. This type of landscape also 
has been widely overlooked. The American peo- 
ple especially have not felt its beauty nor under- 
stood its significance. In the old country civili- 
zation has done better. In England there is a lively 
and conscious love of the cultivated landscape, for 
practically all England is cultivated. In the Ger- 
man language the same feeling is recognized in the 
settled term Kultur-Landschaft. Doubtless, we in 
America will presently come to a similar under- 
standing of the beauty of well farmed country, and 



39 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

will learn to love the farm landscape and to realize 
its deeper spiritual significance. 

The student and lover of the landscape must not 
only cultivate its acquaintance, he must especially 
seek what is beautiful in this outdoor world. He 
must discriminate. He must find the best and give 
his chief est homage to that. 

It is one of the first requirements in art, though 
often overlooked, that one must find the best and 
associate with it chiefly. The beginner spends too 
much time criticizing what is bad or trying to im- 
prove what is indifferent. The artist will find 
beauty in many places where thoughtless or un- 
trained persons overlook it; but wherever he may 
have to search, he will look only for what is good, 
dismissing from his attention as quickly as possi- 
ble everything squalid or disorderly or ugly. 

Now this exercise of seeking out whatever is best 
in the landscape and fixing the attention on that, 
is a perfectly simple undertaking and can be 
practiced by children. For some years I have ex- 
perimented with this method of instruction in the 
public schools. The method is of enough impor- 



40 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

tance to bear restatement.* A set of landscape ex- 
ercises is made up, each one of which calls direct 
attention to some beautiful feature. 
Here are sample exercises : 

No. 1. Trees. Where is the finest tree in town? 
What kind of a tree is it? How old? What is its 
history? 

No. 2. Views. Where is the best view or outlook 
in town? What can you see from this point? How 
might this view be improved? 

And so on. The characteristic feature of each ex- 
ercise is that it sends the pupil to seek something 
beautiful, it leads him to consider carefully the re- 
lationships which influence its effect, it helps him to 
make comparisons, while appealing frankly to his 
personal preference (and this is fundamentally im- 
portant), it urges on his thought some reasons for 
his opinion. 

When a series of such exercises, carefully 
planned and fairly superintended, are carried out 
in school, they lead to a pretty thorough acquaint- 

* This plan of school instruction is more fully stated in 
my book "The Landscape Beautiful." 



41 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

ance with the local landscape, always with empha- 
sis on the features of greatest beauty. This con- 
stitutes genuine art education, and also it exempli- 
fies the kind of acquaintanceship with the landscape 
which is fundamentally necessary to the man or 
woman who would know what the natural style of 
landscape gardening means. 



42 



FORM AND SPIRIT 

OUR definition of the natural style of land- 
scape gardening recognizes both form and 
spirit. We have said that it is a method of 
landscape gardening in which the natural forms of 
landscape are used and imbued with the spirit of 
the native landscape. It ought to be perfectly 
clear that both form and spirit are everywhere 
requisite. It is altogether possible to separate the 
two; but the form without the spirit is a mere 
corpse, empty and disappointing, while the spirit 
disembodied is a mere ghost — the dream of some 
artist's imagination — perhaps a dream which the 
artist is too lazy or too untrained to realize in physi- 
cal form. 

It ought to be obvious further, as a sort of art 
axiom, that there should always be a close corre- 
spondence between form and spirit. Certain forms 
are best adapted to express certain ideas or emo- 
tions. In architecture the church form, with its 



43 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

gothic windows and its towering spire, expresses a 
religious thought; the business block, with its wude 
doors and its show windows, expresses a commercial 
idea; the state capitol, with its columned porches 
and its rounded dome, expresses a civic feeling. So 
in landscape architecture, the big formal garden 
carries the spirit of the courtly life which once filled 
Schoenbninn and Versailles; the snug, walled Eng- 
lish garden expresses the feeling of the home-loving, 
garden-loving English countryman; the bold "front 
yard" of the American suburbs, set out with one 
blue spruce and one weeping mountain ash, ex- 
presses the crude taste, the ostentation, the desire 
for public show, of the bourgeois suburbanite. 

But let us first consider form. It has been said, 
though hastily and untruthfully, that the natural 
landscape has no form and no composition. The 
fact is that it has very definite forms, very distinct 
and clear-cut types and very rigid principles of com- 
position. 

These are founded on the most fundamental prin- 
ciples of physics, — such simple principles, for ex- 
ample, as that water runs down hill and that trees 



44 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

grow straight up. According to the former prin- 
ciple it is determined that all lakes shall be in 
depressed areas and that all rivers shall occupy the 
valleys instead of the hilltops. This obvious rule is 
in fact some times violated in so-called landscape 
gardening. Numerous examples might be men- 
tioned of ambitious park makers vrho have put lakes 
at the tops of hills in order that the river might 
come dashing down the cheap artificial slope, 
though the whole intelligence instantly revolts, 
knowing that no river, or brook even, could ever 
occupy such a position. 

Other important principles of natural landscape 
composition that may be mentioned in illustration 
are these: That hills and mountains are always 
wider at their bases than at their tops ; that moun- 
tains tend to stand in ranks or ranges ; that prairies 
are nearly always flat; that slow rivers have wide 
valleys, while swift water runs in narrow valleys; 
that trees and all other vegetation are larger and 
denser in the valleys, shrinking in size and impor- 
tance as we rise in altitude. 

So we might go on with a very considerable in- 



45 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

ventory of principles, every one of which exercises 
a quite decided influence upon the forms of native 
landscape. It will answer the present purpose, 
however, to point out that these are the simple prin- 
ciples of physics as expressed in geology and physi- 
cal geography. In order, therefore, to understand 
the unit forms of natural landscape we must know 
something of geology and of physical geography. 
One then grasps the landscape result along with 
the geologic cause. It is plain that the Berkshire 
Hills must have rounded tops because they were 
ground down by the glaciers, while the Rocky 
Mountains will have acute tops because they are 
recently broken up by volcanic action and have 
never been eroded at the peaks. It is plain that the 
sand dunes of Lake Michigan and New Jersey 
must lie in billows; that great areas of the lower 
Mississippi Valley must be in swamps; and that 
the west slope of the Cascade range will support 
a very different flora from the dry east slope. 

These great geologic forces are then the deter- 
mining factors in the formation of all the great 
natural types of landscape as enumerated in Chap- 

46 




IX THE BERKSHIRE HILLS 

Photograph by R. E. Schouler 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardeiiing 

ter II. These landscape types are in fact so many 
natural landscape forms. We should further no- 
tice especially that each of these forms has its own 
spirit. It is almost impossible to speak of the 
mountains without thinking of the spirit of the 
mountains as well as of their physical form. Dr. 
Wilhelm Miller has recently published a notable 
treatise on "The Prairie Spirit in Landscape Gar- 
dening," which deals, as a matter of course, with 
both the physical prairie and the spirit of the plains. 
While topography, the main element of the nat- 
ural landscape, is determined chiefly by geologic 
factors, vegetation, the element of second import- 
ance, is determined largely by present climatic con- 
ditions and is to be understood therefore by ref- 
erence to the teachings of physical geography. At 
this time I do not wish to enter into any lengthy 
discussion of these geologic and geographic data, 
but merely to make it clear that the natural land- 
scape does present perfectly definite and recog- 
nizable forms determined by perfectly simple and 
well-known forces. The question of vegetation, 
however, and its relation to landscape forms de- 



47 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

serve some further consideration. 

In practical landscape gardening the develop- 
ment of the natural style has always been deeply 
involved with questions of planting — with the choice 
and management of species. Indeed, these ideas 
have comprised the whole sum and substance, the 
beginning and the end, the body and the meaning, 
of the natural style in many minds. 

Unquestionably the selection and management of 
the plant materials does play a major role in practi- 
cal landscape gardening, and especially in the natu- 
ral style. The fact that topography, at least in its 
main features, is beyond the reach of the landscape 
maker leaves him under the necessity of falling back 
to what is in reality this secondary position. But 
since it is necessary, no matter what the reasons, 
to produce our principal results through our plant- 
ings, it becomes doubly necessary to study this 
part of our work with the utmost care. 

We must have, not merely a facile familiarity 
with plants, but we must have some fairly pro- 
found philosophy of their use. That is, we must be 
able to use plants as nature uses them, to found 



48 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

our selections and our groupings on the same fun- 
damental laws which govern these matters in the 
wild and native landscape. 

Many partial philosophies have been offered in 
this connection. Every one seems to be sound, as 
far as it goes. We may say, therefore, that they 
are all true, and for practical use we may add them 
all together and adopt the total. A brief review 
of these different ideas will be worth while here. 

1. The use of native species in preference to ex- 
otics began to be urged strongly in America about 
1890. Downing's theory of the natural style which 
had prevailed up to this time had endeavored to 
use the forms of the natural landscape without 
the native materials. This preference for native 
plants, however, was reinforced by many argu- 
ments, some of them very questionable, until it be- 
came a sort of fad. It was, therefore, only in part 
an effort to realize a more perfectly natural style 
of gardening. 

2. Very soon, however, appeared the idea of mass 
planting. This seems to have been the special con- 
tribution of Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr. It repre- 



49 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

sents a most substantial advance, since nature mani- 
festly offers her plantings nearly always in large 
masses. The white pine, for instance, used to ex- 
ist in solid unbroken forest masses hundreds of 
miles in extent. There used to be thousands of 
miles of prairie in this country covered with blue 
stem and bunch grass. 

3. Nature's mass plantings, however, are con- 
trolled by very well settled conditions of soil and 
moisture. A mass planting of high-bush blue-ber- 
ries or of New Jersey tea, for example, cannot be 
made indifferently anywhere the landscape gar- 
dener may choose. The blueberries are at home, 
native and natural, only in wet, springy or half- 
swampy land; and the New Jersey tea belongs 
characteristically on dry warm sandy banks. So 
our mass plantings, if they are to be true to the 
pattern of nature, must be placed with strict ref- 
erence to soil and drainage conditions. This part 
of planting theory seems to have been set forth 
first and most clearly by Dr. Engler and Dr. Pe- 
ters, respectively curator and planting foreman of 
the new Botanic garden of Berlin. 



50 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

4. Another discovery of still more recent date 
calls to our aid that branch of botanical science 
known as ecology. It is readily observed that very 
few species of plants exist in nature alone. Prac- 
tically every one associates habitually with certain 
other species. Thus they form set clubs or societies. 
And these friendly associations, based upon simi- 
larity of tastes and complementary habits of 
growth, should not be broken up. If we as land- 
scape gardeners desire to preserve the whole aspect 
of nature, with all its forms intact, we will keep all 
plants in their proper social groupings. 

For example, if we wish to use the gray birch, 
or squaw birch, to give a good naturalistic dress 
to some dry hillside, w^e will not leave it alone, but 
will use its whole society, the roll of which is some- 
what as follows: 

SQUAW BIRCH SOCIETY 

Squaw Birch, Gray Birch, Betula populifolia. 
Dwarf Savin, Dwarf Juniper, Juniperus com- 
munis. 

Black Huckleberry, Gaylu^sacia baccata. 



51 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

Sweet Fern, Myrica as pleni folia. 
Sumach, Rhus glabra and copallina. 

Or if we have a wide stretch of barren sandy- 
plain in Massachusetts, we will probably adopt the 
pitch pine flora, which is characteristic of such land. 
Its main features are as follows: 

PITCH PINE SOCIETY 

Pitch Pine, Pinus rigida. 
Scrub Oak, Querctis prinoides. 
Black Scrub Oak, Quercus ilicifolia. 
Poverty Grass, Andropogon scoparius. 

This ecological principle is the one most clearly 
elucidated by Willy Lange in his important work, 
"Die Garten- Gestaltung der Neuzeit." 

Looking at the landscape from these different 
points of view, we gradually gain familiarity with 
its various forms. We learn to know the shape of 
the mountains, the forms of the trees, the slope of 
the terraces on the river banks. If we have within 
us any spiritual nature we learn at the same time 



52 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

something of the spirit of the landscape. This is 
obviously something much harder to define or de- 
scribe. I cannot say to every man, lo, here is the 
spirit of the woods ! or look now at the water where 
you shall behold the naked spirit of the lake. 

Nevertheless there is a spirit of the woods and 
a spirit of the lake, and the spiritually minded per- 
son will certainly discern them. Even the dullest 
man has so much of the divine essence in him that 
he cannot wholly escape it. He may look on with 
the cow at the same fields and views, and though 
she gets her dinner from them he will get some- 
thing more and different. 

It is plain, furthermore, that this spiritual or 
emotional product of the landscape takes a spe- 
cific quality from its physical form. The emotions 
communicated to the human heart from the ocean 
are not the same as those given by the brook. Our 
spirits are moved in one way by the pine forest and 
in a very different way by the prairies. The bank 
of blue blossoming lupines means one thing to us 
and the thundering waterfall means quite another. 
Yet these spiritual, emotional products can hardly 



53 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

be described aside from the physical forms and phe- 
nomena through which they are expressed. So 
poor are we in the nomenclature of the spirit. 

This poverty of language, sad as it is, is no new 
matter, and it need not detain us now if we only 
understand that the absence of words does not mean 
a lack of facts. The spiritual portion of the world 
is still there, just as truly as the physical portion. 
Probably it is more powerful, more significant and 
much longer lived. 

Before men became civilized into their present 
infidelity and materialism, our landscape was in- 
habited by wild Indians — the "savage" aborigines. 
These simple citizens lived much nearer to nature 
than we do and understood her a great deal better. 
It is a curious fact that their thought of nature 
was an extravagant spiritualism, almost as extreme, 
though never as crude, as our modem materialism. 
But there is every reason to suppose that they were 
nearer right than we are. 

Any direct attempt to capture the spirit of the 
landscape hardly promises success. Yet, beginning 
with this clear understanding of the existence of 



54 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

such a spirit, and living in the constant thought of 
learning from that great Mother Spirit, we may be 
perfectly sure of making some progress. Growth 
in spiritual discernment and in spiritual power is 
just as natural to a sane man as growth in bulk is 
to a healthy boy. 

A great deal depends on taking the proper atti- 
tude, — on looking always for the spiritual signifi- 
cance of the landscape — on thinking of it in spirit- 
ual terms — in living the life of the spirit in happy 
association with the dual world (spirit and matter 
blended) about us, — a world in which we are our- 
selves characteristic and integral. 

Every effort is worth while, of course, which 
will enable us to grasp more firmly our own emo- 
tional experience. We want to clarify our own 
feelings derived from the landscape. We can al- 
ways find help in this direction from any of the 
arts, since all of them draw their inspiration from 
nature. Literature is full of this spirit, especially 
the sounder portions of the modern nature litera- 
ture. Careful reading in this field will help be- 
cause it will show us what response good men and 



55 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

good women have made to the appeals of the land- 
scape spirit. 

For about two generations the painters, like the 
poets, have dealt honestly with the landscape, en- 
deavoring to get from it the truth of nature rather 
than trying to fix upon it their preconceived super- 
stitions. It hardly needs to be said that every na- 
ture painter is trying to do more than to record 
the mere physical features of the landscape. Every 
one of them is trying, with all the power there is 
in him, to oifer us also a spiritual message. It is, 
therefore, greatly worth our while, as lovers of the 
landscape, as believers in spiritual things, and as 
would-be landscape architects, to see what the paint- 
ers have to offer. 

After a good many years of study and teach- 
ing, however, I am inclined to believe that music 
offers the readiest approach to a spiritual inter- 
pretation of the landscape. Music has so slight a 
physical body that very few persons are troubled 
by it. Even the stupidest publican understands 
that music is addressed straight to his spirit. If he 
gets anything from it it must be some emotional 



56 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

effect. The emotional or spiritual quantity in mu- 
sic is particularly evident. 

Moreover, the emotions aroused by music are 
singularly like these aroused by the landscape. One 
hears a ringing Sousa march, and one experiences 
the fine martial emotions that one feels of a brisk 
October morning as one spins down the street in 
the automobile between the double row of stately 
maples. Or one listens to Mischa Elman play the 
DvoMk Humoresque — to take another trite exam- 
ple — and one feels the homesick longing expressed 
by Tom Sawyer who sat on the hills in springtime 
and looked across the valleys and yearned and 
yearned and wanted to cry but couldn't think of 
anything to cry about. 

So direct is this parallelism between music and 
the landscape that for some years I have been in 
the habit of using music to arouse the imaginations 
of my students in landscape gardening. It is ab- 
solutely essential, of course, that their imaginations 
be aroused — that they be trained in the habit of 
landscape feeling. So I play them on the Victrola 
the best records that are made — the Sextet from 



57 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

Lucia, the Wedding March from Lohengrin, Haen- 
del's Largo, and even some symphonic selections, 
and then I require them to return to me programs 
of landscapes which would awaken the same sen- 
timents. The exercise is perfectly simple and prac- 
tical, and gives better and more uniform results 
than many of the experiments in chemistry. 

Any one will find it profitable to use music in 
this way, and to practice himself in the interpre- 
tation of music into landscape and landscape into 
music. It does not require any special musical edu- 
cation any more than it demands a specialized edu- 
cation in landscape. 

In spite of our abject poverty of spiritual lan- 
guage, it may be worth while for us before drop- 
ping this subj ect to try to specify some of the spirit- 
ual elements or products of landscape. 

And first of all the landscape breathes with the 
spirit of life. There may be a perfectly dead land- 
scape on the moon, but that is not our planet. 
Our world teems with life. From the infinitesi- 
mal microbe, swarming by millions in the drop of 
water, to the crowding trees in the forest there is 



58 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

life — ^growing, urgent, irrepressible life. Even the 
inanimate ocean and the tumbling clouds and the 
singing brook are so nearly alive that they tell the 
same story to our listening ears. 

Then the world is full of energy — of power. 
From the tiniest insect boldly winging its course 
against the wind, to the storm waves of the ocean 
grinding to powder the rocks on the headland, there 
is the expression of immeasurable energy. The 
wide sweeping prairie wind, the crashing tree in 
the forest, the roaring waterfall, the spouting gey- 
ser, all impress our souls with the infinite power 
which moves creation. 

Then there is the spirit of beauty, as universal 
and almost as irresistible. Everywhere the world 
is beautiful. If one were to ask for a definition 
of beauty we could not do better than show him the 
landscape : that is beauty. Nature is the beauty by 
which all other beauties are measured. This qual- 
ity, too, is universal. From the most fragile snow 
crystal to the highest mountain all is instinct with 
the spirit of beauty. 

The landscape is nearly always peaceful. There 



59 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

are occasional storms of magnificent fury, but as a 
rule the arctic wastes and the tropical jungles are 
both as peaceful as eternity. Those who seek 
peace wisely always go to the landscape. Physi- 
cians uniformly prescribe the quiet country and the 
open landscape for their over-civilized and bedev- 
iled patients. The worried man who makes an ex- 
cuse of his trout rod to linger in the solitudes where 
the shadows lie across the pools knows this land- 
scape spirit of peace; and the tired woman gazing 
out of her window to the purple of the distant hills 
knows. 

In the landscape is not only peace but joy. It 
is a joy sometimes so wild and gay as almost to 
contradict the spirit of peace. The rivers chuckle 
to themselves as they tumble over obstacles in their 
way; the flowers burst with joyous bloom; the birds 
sing with all their might and main, and the trees of 
the forests clap their hands for joy. It is enough 
to dry the tears of Niobe. 

Yet even in our moments of deepest vision and 
highest ecstasy the landscape is not wholly revealed. 
There is always something beyond. Indeed, this 



60 



' ill'/ {\iU^7i^ 



\^ V a 




EARLY srillXGTIME 

Photograph by the Author 




AS VlEWKl) FltO.AI TUf: BRIDGE 



The Natural Style in Landscape Garderdng 

spirit of mystery is one of the most truly charac- 
teristic qualities of the natural world. It is a great 
and highly spiritual quality wholly opposed to the 
scientific passion for complete and classified knowl- 
edge. Our generation has followed this passion for 
science to such lengths, has been so wrought with 
the ideal of discovering and publishing everything, 
that this spirit of mystery comes as a greatly needed 
corrective. We shall never understand the land- 
scape until we understand that we can never un- 
derstand it all. 

In the story of the creation it is related that the 
spirit of God breathed upon the waters. The spirit 
of God still breathes there. Most men find God 
speaking to them most directly from the clouds, 
from the rain, from the sea or from the hills. One 
of them said: 

"I will look up to the hiUs^ whence cometh my help: 
"My help cometh from the Lord, who made Heaven 
and Earth." 

Yes, quite plainly, of all the spirits moving in 
the landscape the greatest is the Father of all spir- 
its, the one known to the theologians as the Holy 



61 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

Spirit. But of his progeny there are legions more. 
Not only the great spirit of life, the spirit of power, 
the spirit of beauty and the spirit of joy, but all 
the lesser spirits — the prairie spirit, the spirit of 
the pine woods, the spirit of the palmetto swamps, 
and all the rest — to every landscape its own spirit. 
It is very, very easy to conclude that the Indians 
were right when they thought of the world as peo- 
pled with spirits, assigning to every tree and shrub 
its living soul. 

And so we conclude that this physical world 
which we see (and which the cow sees) is only a 
part of the landscape. Within those physical 
forms and without them and beyond them there are 
corresponding spiritual parts which form a spirit- 
ual landscape just as real and even more closely 
related to our half -human, half-divine souls. 



62 



THE LANDSCAPE MOTIVE 

EVERY work of art should have its subject, 
theme or motive. This principle is suffi- 
ciently obvious. In the natural style of 
landscape gardening, however, it becomes especially 
important to keep this principle in view, and to 
have some very dejfinite method for putting it into 
effect. In certain types of gardening it may pos- 
sibly answer to give a general, more or less vague, 
feeling of beauty, or of festivity, or of courtliness, 
but when one essays the larger flights of composi- 
tion in informal landscape, it is positively neces- 
sary to artistic success that some definite, concrete 
motive be adopted and developed. 

Comparisons with the other arts are illuminating 
at this point. The idea of the theme or motive * 
is universally recognized in music. If we adopt the 

* In common studio patter this word is always pronounced 
and written motif; but since we have a plain English spelling 
for precisely the same word, I prefer to spell it motive. 

63 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

stronger form of the idea which the musicians rec- 
ognize as the leit-motiv, we shall have just what the 
landscape gardener is seeking for his art. It is 
the leading motive or theme of the musical com- 
position which stands out as its recognizable quan- 
tity, which gives it character. This leading motive 
is introduced near the beginning of the work, fre- 
quently in the very first period, and is carried for- 
ward to the finale. In the meantime it is presented 
in many different ways, sometimes very simply, 
sometimes much elaborated and overlaid with or- 
nament, sometimes changing keys, but always capa- 
ble of recognition as the dominating theme. 

The comparison with literature is quite as much 
to the point. No one would attempt to excuse a 
literary essay which did not promptly announce 
one distinct theme and then stick strictly to it. In 
successive paragraphs of the essay or sermon this 
theme would be developed from different points of 
view and would be given different methods of lit- 
erary treatment. First it would be stated in sim- 
ple terms, then it would be illustrated by an ex- 
ample, then enforced by historical evidence, then 

64 



TJie Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

given the "human interest" treatment (vox humana 
stop), then touched off with a funny story, then 
brought to a resounding climax. But all the way 
through, and in every paragraph, the theme — the 
leading motive — would stand out clearly and con- 
trol the meaning of every word. 

This comparison is the more valuable because 
the informal type of landscape composition bears 
so many resemblances to prose composition in lit- 
erature. The formal garden might be likened to 
poetry. Each line has just so many feet; each 
part is formally balanced by another exactly cor- 
responding part. In poetry it is much less neces- 
sary than in prose to develop a definite and didactic 
theme. The form may be so beautiful in its obvi- 
ous perfections that a mere vague feeling of beauty 
or of mystery or of human passion may suffice. It 
is not at all necessary to reach any specific con- 
clusions. But the prose writer and the naturalis- 
tic landscape gardener can not depend on these 
things, — the forms with which they deal are not suf- 
ficiently obvious to be admired on their own ac- 
count; more attention must be given to content, 

65 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

and content must be presented in a logical, under- 
standable way. 

Now sound prose writing depends absolutely on 
two principles, videlicit, first, on unity of theme, 
and, second, on paragraphic structure. It is now 
our purpose to develop these two principles in their 
application to the naturalistic form of landscape 
gardening. 

The landscape motive may be defined as the cen- 
tral subject matter of each composition. This defi- 
nition should specifically include both form and 
spirit, for the landscape motive should present a 
tangible physical unit clearly expressive of the dom- 
inating spirit of the whole work. 

This definition is illustrated in the comparisons 
already made between the subject, text or topic in 
literature, the theme or motive in music, and the 
leading motive in landscape. The idea can be made 
clearer, however, and further illustrated, by giving 
a few examples of landscape motives. 

The oak-tree motive: On the low rolling hills 
of the central Mississippi basin, perhaps most typi- 
cally in Missouri, are miles and miles of scattered 



&Q 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

oaks. These give the country its character. They 
are the natural landscape motive. As such they 
could be readily adopted by the artist designing a 
naturalistic park reserve in this country. It would 
then become his opportunity to present the beauty 
of the oak trees from as many points of view and in 
as many different ways as possible. 

The Florida pine-tree motive: In central Flor- 
ida the tall, straight, sparsely scattered pine trees 
dominate the landscape. Here they are always as- 
sociated with the scrub palmetto, forming an eco- 
logical group (see page 51) which, however, may 
still be called the pine-tree motive. 

The birch-tree motive : On the dry hill-side pas- 
tures of New England the birches are very much 
at home. The squaw birch, or gray birch, in par- 
ticular may be accepted as the most characteristic 
plant. It is usually associated with other plants 
(see page 51), and these together form a great 
variety of effective pictures. The young sprouts, 
the crowded young trees, the graceful mature 
groups, or the hoary old specimens are all beautiful, 
so that the development of the birch tree idea has 



67 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

alluring possibilities. 

The sunflower motive : My own little garden is 
dominated by its sunflowers. This is partly a rem- 
iniscence of Kansas, and doubtless also partly an 
expression of my own weedy philosophy. What- 
ever the primary reason for having those sunflow- 
ers there no one could ever think of that garden 
without its sunflowers. It has other things in it 
— plenty of them, — but it is essentially a sunflower 
garden, — it is dominated by the sunflower motive. 

The hollyhock motive: In Vermont, on the 
shores of Lake Champlain, I know a fine substan- 
tial dignified old-fashioned stone farmhouse. About 
it is a comfortable lawn space set off by a low picket 
fence from the encroachments of the farmyard. 
Along the foundations of this comfortable old house 
and also close up against the picket fence runs a 
border of hollyhocks. There may or may not be 
other things growing in that garden — I don't re- 
member. To me it is always a garden of holly- 
hocks. 

The river motive: Wherever a river threads its 
way through a landscape it is pretty sure to carry 



68 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 



with it the dominating landscape theme. Count- 
less beautiful views show up and down its stretches. 
Masses of hills or trees come into view at every 
bend. Endless pictures are reflected in its quiet 
reaches, and endless songs go up from its rocky 
riffles. Any park lying along almost any river 
would quite certainly be dominated by the river 

motive. 

In the Muddy Brook Parkway, Boston, Mr. 
Frederick Law Ohnsted, Sr., gave us a small but 
highly refined example of this type of landscape 

motive. 

The prairie motive: Personally, just to satisfy 
my own artistic aspirations, I would like to make a 
prairie park. I would like to have a few miles of 
perfectly flat land in Central or Western Kansas, 
and I would like to have it lie where the level hori- 
zon would form an unbroken circle some fifteen 
miles in radius. This level line would be my mo- 
tive, and I would put in only enough upright lines 
to give the little necessary artistic contrast and to 
supply a scale of distances. I would have a lawn 
of buffalo grass furnished with the exceptionally 

69 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

rich and interesting flora of that section, — Anem- 
one carohna, Astragalus missouriensis, Baptisia 
australis, Salvia grandiflora, Asclepias varticillata, 
Tradescantia virginica, and never forgetting Opun- 
tia rafinesquii. Here a man might stand quietly 
in the center of a stable horizontal world with crea- 
tion all open around and above him, with himself 
the center of it, — the very type of our whole north- 
ern anthropocentric philosophy. 

The Connecticut motive: This reference to the 
prairie motive introduces us to a much more com- 
plex notion, the motive made up of several ele- 
ments, the relationships of which may fluctuate 
from paragraph to paragraph. I once heard an art 
critic say of certain paintings that they looked very 
Connecticut. The landscape gardener who could 
make a park look very Connecticut would plainly 
be obliged to use the Connecticut motive. This mo- 
tive would be a compound of several simple ele- 
ments, such as 

a. Low rounded hills. 

b. Scattering forest of mixed chestnut, oak 
and pine. 



70 




on MOUXT TOBY, MASSACHUSETTS 

Photografh by the Author 




NATURALISTIC COMPOSITIOX. GROUNDS OF THE MASSACHUSETTS AGRICUL- 
TURAL COLLEGE 

Planned, executed and jihotoc/raphed by the Author 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardemng 

c. Undergrowth of laurel. 

d. Marginal growth of birch, dogwoods and 
viburnums. 

e. Half -open pastures with red cedars. 

This Connecticut landscape then becomes a theme 
of unlimited possibilities. It may be given more 
liberal, diversified and intricate treatment than the 
pine-tree motive, and it will necessarily be much 
harder to carry such a theme clearly home to the 
audience. Yet this is just what every thoughtful 
landscape gardener is trying to do. 

The history motive : Any one who visits the na- 
tional reservation at Lookout Mountain must find 
the views very impressive. But unless he is wholly 
innocent of imagination he will be promptly drawn 
away from the glories of Moccasin Bend by the 
historic associations. The place is saturated with 
them. Relics, tablets and monuments are com- 
moner than trees. They are easily accepted as the 
dominating subject matter — the leading motive. 

The Shakespeare motive: In a London park I 
once visited a little enclosed garden said to contain 
every kind of flower and shrub mentioned in the 



71 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

works of Shakespeare. It was a curious place — I 
am sure some persons found it interesting. To 
me it stands as a first-class illustration of the liter- 
ary or extrinsic or accidental motive. This is cer- 
tainly not the highest type of landscape motive, 
but it is perfectly legitimate, nevertheless. 

Possibly it may make this important matter of 
motives clearer to summarize what has been said by 
a rough sort of classification. It is clear that the 
more usual landscape motives fall into the follow- 
ing groups: 

1. Topographic motives, such as prairie, moun- 
tains, rivers, lakes. 

2. Tree motives, belonging primarily to those 
natural landscapes which are dominated by some 
single species. This motive species is usually as- 
sociated with other secondary species, which then 
become integral to the theme. 

3. Garden flower motives, such as sunflower, the 
hollyhock, and hundreds more, suited for use chiefly 
in small gardens. 

4. Historic, literary and other extraneous mo- 
tives. 



72 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardemng 

The manner in which these motives are developed 
in landscape composition will be discussed more 
fully in the next chapter. 



7S 



PRINCIPLES OF STRUCTURAL COM- 
POSITION 

THOSE who have not considered the matter 
are apt to think that a garden in the natural 
style has no structure, that it is a merely ac- 
cidental succession of parts. This notion is wrong, 
of course. The home garden, public park or forest 
reserve intelligently designed in the natural style 
has just as definite and logical a plan as the best 
geometrical garden. Its structure follows laws 
just as plain and necessary. There are, to be sure^ 
a great many gardens to be found in an alleged nat- 
ural style which truly have neither rhyme nor rea- 
son. They have no plan nor structure. They were 
not designed. They just grew, like Topsy. No — 
that's assigning them too much credit, for a garden 
which grows up honestly round the family life of 
owners, or a park that grows up decently in the 
hands of a devoted superintendent, often shows a 
genuine form and structure given to it by the natu- 



74 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

ral forces of growth. The mere fact that there are 
some "natural" gardens without form and void 
cannot stand against the structural possibilities of 
this style. There are also a great many geometri- 
cal gardens in which the structure is merely fortu- 
itous or wholly inarticulate. 

The first structural problem in designing in the 
natural style comes with the division of the ground 
into various compartments. If we are dealing with 
a park of any size, there will be perhaps a piece 
of woodland here, beyond it an open field to be de- 
voted to golf, on the other side a section for a picnic 
ground, then a little children's playground, and 
finally an area for public music and festivity. 
These divisions will follow the natural features of 
the topography and the social demands of the situ- 
ation, but they are to be made with great care. 
Frederick Law Olmsted used to give particular 
thought to this part of his study and it is very in- 
teresting to go over the plans of Mount Royal 
Park, Montreal, Frankhn Park, Boston, or Jack- 
son Park, Chicago, for examples, to see how these 
divisions were made and what clever names he in- 



75 



The Natural Style in landscape Gardening 

vented for them. This naming of the parts, e. g., 
"The Upper Fells," "The Greeting," "The 
Wooded Island" is significant, for it indicates that 
to each of these parts the artist wished to give a 
character of its own. This little trick was peculiar 
to Olmsted and has not even been well imitated by 
anybody since his day. 

Even in the small private garden, the same 
method of subdivision has to be followed to some 
extent. The massing of wild flowers should be ap- 
pointed to one section, the open lawn with its cro- 
quet ground should have its own allotment, the big 
shade trees belong in another quarter and the ever- 
greens still elsewhere. It may not be possible to 
develop these several characters so completely as in 
the larger spaces of a big park, but the essential 
structure is there just the same. A coffee mill is 
not so big as a turbine steamship, but it has its own 
parts and structure quite as truly. 

It is not to be understood that these parts in a 
natural park or garden are to be separated from 
each other by distinct lines in any case. If they are 
set apart by high walls, then we have several gar- 

76 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

dens instead of one, and each of these gardens has 
its own organization. The happy blending of these 
several compartments along their lines of juncture, 
while preserving their essential character within, is 
a part of the landscape gardener's art. So far as 
this art has any technic, it follows the rules dis- 
cussed elsewhere for the blending of groups in 
planting. 

In very large parks, however, the various sec- 
tions, or certain of them, may become so large as 
to require treatment like separate parks. A big 
state park of fifty square miles, for example, might 
have a public camp ground along the lake shore, a 
forest reserve on the mountain sides, and a fair 
grounds at one corner. These three enterprises 
would present practically three problems and would 
call for three park designs. Every work of art 
must fall into commensurable limits, that is within 
such range that one man at one time and place can 
comprehend and enjoy the whole. When it re- 
quires three days to perform one musical composi- 
tion it ceases to be a work of art and becomes a gen- 
eral exhibition. 



77 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

We have in hand now our tract of land with all 
its natural features, we understand all the require- 
ments of our problem, we have determined on the 
plan of subdivision, and we are ready to attack the 
design. We may suppose also that we have adopted 
a theme or leading motive, such as has been dis- 
cussed in Chapter IV. The next problem in struc- 
tural technic is to effect an entrance. 

The main entrance to a park or garden is fre- 
quently fixed by the conditions of the problem. 
In such cases it is usually possible to accept the 
situation without discussion, though occasionally a 
proposed entrance is so unfortunate as to justify 
heroic efforts for its displacement. If the designer 
has some freedom of choice he will give this ques- 
tion very special attention, for a good introduction 
is half the story. The orator spares no pains with 
his exordium to ingratiate himself with his audi- 
ence. The composer of music arranges a carefully 
studied introduction for every set piece. The ar- 
chitect always wishes to have the portal and en- 
trance hall of every building as attractive as pos- 
sible. 



78 




NEW ENGLAND COUNTRY ROAD 




GOING FISHING. THE COUNTRY ROAD 

Photographs by the Author 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

In general, the entrance to the park will be at 
some distance from the culminating feature, if not 
indeed at the farthest remove from it. If contrari- 
wise, one should make his entrance directly upon 
the main show, or immediately facing the grand 
view, the rest of the visit to the park might better 
be abandoned, for it will be a depressing down 
grade run to an anticlimax. For this reason it is 
quite possible, in the anxiety to make a good first 
impression, to overdo the treatment of the park en- 
trance. I could name more than one park in Amer- 
ica in which one sees nothing further to compare 
with the blaze of ornament which greets him at the 
front gate. 

I hesitate to lay it down as a general rule, but I 
have a strong feeling that it is good technic to 
place the entrance somewhere near the lowest level 
of the park. By this expedient, the visitor will see 
most of the scenery as he drives the road on an up 
grade. Photographers and painters know that the 
picturesque compositions which gather along a 
roadway are usually seen to best advantage when 
viewed toward the rising grade. In the strongest 



79 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

pictures the road curves upward, and a composition 
in which it takes a downward course is almost al- 
ways pictorially weak. The visitor, too, on the up 
grade will drive more slowly and have more time 
to enjoy the view. Then when he has reached the 
climax somewhere near the top he can quickly find 
his way down hill to a convenient exit. 

I think there is a psychological reason also for 
the rule here suggested. There is a feeling of ex- 
hilaration and a satisfaction of achievement as one 
climbs the hill which is quite absent from the down 
trip. Mountain climbers always get their pay go- 
ing up. The views coming down are only remi- 
niscences. 

It is good technic to present the main theme, or 
at least to suggest it, in the introduction. The 
musical composer does this. The architect would 
consider his entrance badly designed if one could 
not tell from it whether he was entering a church 
or a military barracks. If the pine woods are to be 
the main theme in a park, it would be quite proper 
to introduce a few pines at the park entrance. Cer- 
tainly a rose-garden would be artistically unsuit- 

80 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

able for the entrance to such a park. If we are 
planning a riverside park, we ought to have a 
glimpse of the river from the entrance, or at least 
some planting or some sculptured setting to suggest 
the flowing water. If we are designing a cemetery 
park the quiet and solemn character of the place 
should be plainly signified at the entrance. I know 
a certain woodland cemetery which has a truly gor- 
geous bed of cannas and coleus at the entrance, fit 
for Monte Carlo or Coney Island. 

From the entrance forward the natural park is 
developed in a sort of panorama. The visitor is 
led from point to point, where he sees picture after 
picture, some of pleasing foregrounds filled with 
flowers, some of quiet masses of trees in middle 
ground, and some inspiring outlooks to distant 
landscapes. These points are connected by a suit- 
able path or roadway which forms the true back- 
bone of the garden structure. 

These successive pictures, however, should bear 
a very definite relationship to one another. First 
of all, each one should present the leading motive 
in some phase of its development. If we are using 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

the river motive then the river should be visible or 
distinctly suggested in each fully developed picture. 

Furthermore, these successive pictures will occur 
at definite points or paragraphs. Each section of 
our drive or walk or trail will be designed to de- 
velop some particular phase of the leading motive. 
Each paragraph then will have its point of culmi- 
nation, beyond which we pass rapidly to the next 
paragraph. 

These culminating points, paragraphic points, 
or nodes, will be given further emphasis by spe- 
cial structural methods, particularly by giving to 
our drive or walk at these points its principal 
change of direction and its principal change of 
grade. It follows naturally that any other fea- 
tures of emphasis, such as seats, shelters or special 
ornamental structures should be placed at para- 
graphic points. If definite exterior or interior 
views are to be emphasized, they, too, should be pre- 
sented from these nodes or paragraphic points. 

To summarize: Each paragraph will proceed 
from its introduction to its culmination consistently 
developing some phase of the leading motive. At 



82 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

the paragraphic period we would usually find the 
following features: 

1. The clearest expression of the paragraphic 
episode — the culmination of the particular phase 
of the leading motive here under development. 

2. The principal change in horizontal direction 
of the roadway. 

3. The principal change of grade. 

4. The principal features of architectural or or- 
namental emphasis. 

5. The principal change in plantings. 

As an illustration we may suppose that the first 
section of our afternoon drive takes us on a long 
sweep to the westward with the warm sun in our 
faces and the wind at the left. We are jogging 
comfortably along on a practically level road, but 
with an up grade varying from nothing to two per 
cent. We are passing across a level meadow land 
spangled with buttercups and daisies. Here and 
there at wide intervals stand fine specimens of white 
oak, representative of the deciduous forest, the lead- 
ing motive of our composition and the subject of 
our afternoon's enjoyment. In front of us we see 



83 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

the heavier masses of the woods scattered over roll- 
ing hills and making a bold but fluent sky line 
against the three o'clock sun. A bobolink sings us 
a snatch of Robert of Lincoln: 

Spink, spank, spink, 
Chee, cliee, chee ! 

awakening the music in our hearts, as the sun has 
already melted the reserve of our city manners and 
we know that we are in the country and the wor- 
ries of the morning's business are already half for- 
gotten. 

Presently we reach the foot of the hill land. The 
roadway turns rather sharply to the right to avoid 
the climb, but nevertheless the gradient is percep- 
tibly increased, varjdng from two to four per cent. 
Dobbin slows down to a walk and we pass to para- 
graph number two. Here the white oaks are still 
scattered rather than massed (white oaks do not 
like to be too sociable; they prefer to keep their 
individuality) ; but they are close enough together 
to suggest the forest. As we rise we still get occa- 
sional glimpses of the meadow, but our main in- 



84f 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 



terest here is in the trees with occasional outcrop- 
pings of interesting rocks partly covered with trail- 
ing masses of sweet briers, and the striking outline 
of the hill to the north of us which now faces us 
since we turned. 




^ PAR.Il&«.A.Pil4 



And so we pass from paragraph to paragraph. 
Perhaps number three brings us to a hill top and 
gives us a view of the woodland about us ; perhaps 
number four descends into a wooded ravine, where 
oak forest passes gradually into maple or beech; 
perhaps number five skirts the bank of a lake, giv- 



85 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

ing us an opportunity to see the magnificent forms 
of the trees on the opposite shore, with their in- 
verted images rippling toward us over the water. 
Such is the paragraphic structure of the natural 
park. 

The same method is applicable to all kinds of in- 
formal composition. If the problem is a simple 
border of mixed perennials along a garden wall, 
we can adopt a leading motive and a paragraphic 
treatment. Or if we are only trying to improve a 
skyline we will divide it into paragraphs, giving 
each section its own treatment, its climax and its 
blend into the next section. 

It is easy to show, of course, that this method is 
practically universal in art. Precisely the same 
terms may be used to describe the structure of an 
oration, a drama, or a good editorial in the Spring- 
field Republican. Each has its theme, its succes- 
sive paragraphs, its periods, its climaxes and its con- 
clusion. Every musical composition has its theme, 
it is divided into several movements, it is para- 
graphed into strains, usually of sixteen measures 
each, the strains are subdivided into bars, and each 



86 




NATURALISTIC COMPOSITIOK. BACK YARD GARDEN 

Desicju by Mr. Jens Jensen 
Photograph by Henry F nermann ^ Sons 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

bar may have two, three, four or six beats. This 
gives us our musical rhythm; but rhythm has its 
uses in other branches of art besides music. I have 
often found it most convenient to speak of the 
rhythm of a garden composition. A row of trees 
has just the same succession of accents which we 
find in the measures of martial music. Rhythm is 
merely a certain kind of paragraphic structure. It 
is easy to see the same rhythmic or paragraphic dis- 
position of parts, in ornamentation or total compo- 
sition, in architecture ; it can be found also in paint- 
ing, especially in decorative painting, while any 
ensemble of sculpture necessarily follows the same 
plan of grouping. 

The comparison of landscape gardening with mu- 
sic is always suggestive, and this comparison de- 
serves to be followed out a little further just at this 
point. The composer of music, as will be easily dis- 
covered, builds up his compositions upon his se- 
lected motives in divers ways. The simplest song 
theme stands alone. The airs of ballads and folk 
songs, and even of dance tunes are always first used 
in this manner. 



87 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

Later follows part singing, with two or three or 
four voices, in duet, trio or quartet. These several 
parts are harmonized. One voice, usually the so- 
prano, "carries the air," that is the theme, while the 
others support it with harmonizing notes. This 
method of composition is frequently followed by 
the landscape architect. 

In his more complex works, as in advanced sym- 
phony, he uses two motives together — sometimes 
three or four. These are woven through and 
through one another and into the texture of his 
symphonic fabric by the method which he calls 
counterpoint. Sometimes motives follow one an- 
other or are contrasted against each other without 
being counterpointed. This contrapuntal method 
of composition is always open to the landscape de- 
signer ; and if it has been seldom adopted the diffi- 
culty of the problem will sufficiently explain that 
fact. 

We may as well admit just here that this theory 
of paragraphs and motives does not make plain the 
w^hole of art. Neither does it offer a short cut to 
success in landscape architecture. We are not 

88 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

offering to teach the suni of garden art in one les- 
son. The paragraphic art has been known in litera- 
ture almost since literature began, yet there are 
only a few writers who give a sound paragraphic 
structure to their work. There are still many es- 
says, editorials and sermons which start nowhere 
and without any recognizable theme, run a level 
uneventful course to the same point. Unfortu- 
nately a considerable part of our naturalistic land- 
scape gardening is of this sort. A man must have 
something to say and some way of saying it before 
he can preach a real sermon. A landscape architect 
must have a genuine inspiration and must then be 
possessed of an effective technic before he can make 
a landscape which has theme and structure, char- 
acter and clothes, spirit and body. The para- 
graphic method belongs only to technic and even 
here indicates merely the fundamental principle. 
Its application still requires artistic skill and the 
skill of the artist comes only through years of de- 
voted practice. 

In as much as these structural principles of in- 
formal composition have been widely overlooked, 



89 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

and as it is important that they should be distinctly- 
understood it may be worth while to summarize the 
entire case here. 

SUMMARY 

1. Every informal park or garden should be par- 
tially or wholly enclosed in order to give it a feeling 
of unity and sometimes of privacy, — but this en- 
closure need not be so obvious nor so complete as 
in the formal garden. Good outlooks should be 
especially preserved. The enclosure will be com- 
posed chiefly of borders of trees and shrubs. In 
very large parks no general enclosure will be at- 
tempted, but special areas may be more or less seg- 
regated for special purposes. 

2. The main structural features will usually be 
roads, paths, or navigable waters ; and the principal 
one of these lines will, as nearly as practicable, cir- 
cumscribe the area under treatment. In certain 
cases it will become a linear vertebral support, as, 
for example, in a long river-way or park- way. 

3. The principal considerations in locating 
drives, walks, etc., will be (a) the shape of the area. 



90 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

(b) topography, (c) convenience of travel between 
important points, (d) development of views. 

4. To secure unity of artistic effect a suitable 
motive or theme should be selected and should be 
adhered to as closely as possible. Under no circum- 
stances should effects at variance with the leading 
motive be introduced. 

5. The successive episodes in the development of 
this motive will appear at well marked points, 
which points will all be upon the main structural 
roads or paths, thus developing the theme in a 
paragraphic manner. 

6. The principal landscape effects will be 
brought together at these paragraphic points or 
nodes. At these points will occur (a) the principal 
changes in direction of roads or paths (b) principal 
change or grade, (c) change of planting, (d) prin- 
cipal interior or exterior views, (e) but especially 
the culmination of the motive episode. 

7. It is desirable to avoid the use of straight 
lines and radial curves, — but awkward and unnat- 
ural curved or crooked lines must be equally 
avoided. 



91 



THE ART OF GROUPING 

LANDSCAPE gardeners, especially those 
of the naturalistic persuasion, have always 
had a suspicion that the art of grouping 
their plants was a very important matter. At one 
time and another a good deal of discussion has been 
given to the subject, a large part of it fruitless. 
Indeed the net result, after years of landscape gar- 
dening, seems very slight. The best men still ap- 
pear to have vague and hazy ideas on the subject. 
Old practitioners have indeed fallen into working 
formulas of their own, but they themselves usually 
feel that these formulas are inadequate, while 
every one else can see that these set methods of 
grouping are more detrimental than useful. It is 
perhaps too much to expect that, under these cir- 
cumstances, the whole art of plant grouping can 
now be set forth simply and effectively in a book. 
Yet a careful discussion of the main points must 
prove helpful, and the endeavor to reach a state- 



92 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

ment of principles will at least be suggestive. 

It seems possible to distinguish seven different 
types of plant groups classified as to form. These 
are (1) the single specimen, (2) the group of two, 
(3) the group of three, (4) the larger group of 
five or more, (5) the row, (6) the mass, (7) the 
social group. 

The single specimen is, strictly speaking, not a 
group, of course, but it demands treatment in this 
same connection. Early landscape gardening dealt 
largely in specimens. Writers often emphasized 
the importance of giving each individual room for 
complete development. Many of the old time gar- 
dens were nothing more than collections of indi- 
vidual specimens. This tendency toward specimen 
planting has not wholly disappeared. In botanic 
gardens it is appropriate and necessary. But in 
pure landscape gardening, where the idea of pic- 
torial composition prevails, the specimen method 
must be curbed. The single fully developed tree, 
standing by itself, is an abnormality and a rarity 
in nature. It is, however, a rarity which is very 
pleasing to the human eye, and the landscape gar- 



93 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

dener may well introduce this unit with consider- 
ably greater frequency than nature does. 

However, in any pictorial composition, specimens 
must be introduced with great restraint. It may be 
considered false composition to make more than one 
specimen visible in any one view. Perhaps it will 
be safe to say that any first-class specimen should 
be so placed as to form the culmination of a para- 
graph. Certainly if an individual tree is worth 
keeping as a specimen it must be worthy of con- 
siderable emphasis, an emphasis which it could pos- 
sibly have at no other point in the composition. 

The group of two seems to be habitually avoided 
by landscape gardeners. Yet I am convinced that 
this is due to an unfounded prejudice. In many 
years of sketching and photographing, seeking 
about for attractive compositions, I have repeatedly 
been drawn to admire two trees of a species stand- 
ing faithfully together in the pasture, in the fence 
row or on the hillside. Indeed I can hardly think 
of any other unit which has so often attracted my 
pencil or my camera. Every one, I suppose, has a 
somewhat human feeling about trees, as though 

94 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

they possessed personalities like our own; and cer- 
tainly two persons of like character always stand 
well together. It is the human feeling that "two 
is company, three is a crowd." I am sure that the 
works of the painters and artist photographers will 
show that two trees properly related have great pic- 
torial value, and this type of grouping ought to be 
more frequently used by landscape planters. 

The group of three, on the other hand, seems to 
have a special fascination for the landscape gar- 
dener, like a bright light for wild animals. Look 
over the planting plans and planting lists in any 
office, and how many hundreds of groups of three 
shall you find! The funny song about "The Three 
Trees" might have been made for their particular 
use. There are literally thousands of entries such 
as "3 Red Maple," "3 Tupelo," "3 Honey Locust," 
"3 Lilacs" or even "3 Hydrangea p.g." 

This is, I suspect, a psychological phenomenon, 
but we need not stop now for psychological expla- 
nations. We can be sure, I believe, without such in- 
vestigations, that the group of three has no such 
pictorial value as its strangely frequent use would 



95 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

imply. Indeed in purely pictorial effect I think 
two trees are usually better than three. And I will 
add one further suspicion, viz., that when three 
trees or shrubs compose a group it is usually better 
to place them in an irregular row than in an equi- 
lateral triangle, though the amateur planter has a 
strong tendency toward the latter figure. 

The group of three ought to be used and used 
with considerable freedom, but it must not be con- 
ventionalized. There can be no doubt about its 
being too often employed. Nature herself does not 
hold the number sacred. She does not choose three 
trees for a group any oftener than two or four. 

The four-tree group is practically unknown in 
artificial planting. Of course there is nothing in 
nature against this unit; but the landscape gar- 
dener seems to feel that four trees of a kind are 
just enough to lose their individuality without gain- 
ing the proper effect of the mass. 

Five trees or shrubs, however, always appeal to 
the thought of the man who makes planting plans 
on a drawing board. The fact that some nursery 
catalogues quote stock by fives and tens also has its 

96 




A NATURAL GROUPING OF TREES 

Photograph by the Author 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

psychological effect. The feeling for odd numbers 
also throws its emphasis on the five. With any- 
where from five to twelve, according to species, we 
have individuals enough to make a genuine and 
effective group. At this stage grouping comes to 
its real meaning ; and it must be allowed that most 
planters are more successful in groups of this size 
than in any other scale. Perhaps this is the same 
as to say that in common garden and park problems 
this unit gives the most advantageous effect. 

Another good reason, however, for the success of 
these larger groups lies in the fact that they offer 
much wider possibilities in detailed composition. 
There is much less danger of falling into one stiff, 
set grouping. 

Since groups of this moderate size have such spe- 
cial value in landscape composition we may prop- 
erly dwell somewhat longer on the problems con- 
nected with their development. 

Thus far we have assumed that each group is to 
be composed of plants all alike — all of the same 
species and variety. In groups of less than five, 
this is almost obligatory, but in larger units there 



97 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

is no such necessity. While there is no limit to the 
number of plants which may reasonably be used in 
a pure group, there should be no prejudice against 
the mixed group. The mixed group has abundant 
prototypes in nature. When properly composed it 
is wholly agreeable to the eye. 

A few very simple rules may be given for making 
up groups of this kind. The following suggestions 
seem safe. 

1. Do not use too many species. Two or three 
are usually more effective than more would be. 
(The law of simplicity.) 

2. One species should dominate the group, the 
others being obviously subordinate. (The law of 
dominance. ) 

3. The species must harmonize, especially in 
color, form and habit of growth. (The law of har- 
mony. ) 

4. They must be socially compatible. (The law 
of ecology.) 

5. They must all be adapted to the local condi- 
tions of soil, drainage, light, etc. (The law of 
adaptation. ) 



98 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 



The row of trees is commonly excluded from all 
naturalistic planting, or is admitted only under 
protest. The row is obviously artificial and so con- 
tradicts flatly the feeling which the landscape gar- 
dener is often trying to establish, i. e., the feeling 
that here nature has had her own way. It is quite 
plain that the tree row is outside the forms of nature 
and may even break seriously upon the spirit of 
naturalistic work. 

All this may be granted, and yet the tree row not 
wholly abolished. There are many places where the 
natural style may be appropriately adopted yet 
where the illusion of the uninhabited wilderness can 
never be attained. Large and obvious compromises 
with civilization may be made without vitiating en- 
tirely the naturalistic method. Straight streets and 
long architectural lines are common elements in our 
practical landscape problems; and they are ele- 
ments to be met frankly and honestly. Along such 
lines the formal row of trees always has charm, 
dignity, beauty. It is by no means always neces- 
sary, therefore, to exclude such objects of charm, 
dignity and beauty from every composition on the 



99 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

ground of their essential unnaturalness, especially 
after the compromise has already been forced from 
another quarter. 

What is true of the formal tree row will be even 
more readily admitted in the matter of the informal 
row. In all the regions of the Old World where 
men have lived long and numerously, and in those 
parts of America which have approached the same 
conditions, we find the informal irregular tree row 
a very common unit in the landscape. Such ragged 
rows represent the borders of old fields, old fence 
lines, the position of lost roads or of property di- 
visions. As a rule they are picturesque and pleas- 
ing — often extremely so. Look on the paintings in 
the art gallery and see how frequently their beauty 
has moved the artist's brush. It would be folly to 
reject from our landscape gardening a unit of such 
approved power. We are not even justified in ex- 
cluding it from the natural style, for indeed these 
picturesque tree borders do not fit any better, nor 
half so well, into any formal gardening. 

If we are able to adopt — as we surely shall be 
within the next century — the agricultural land- 



100 




Row Ol lltKKS ALONG THE PASTURE FEXCE 

Photograph by the Author 




OLD APPLE ORCHARD 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

scape more fully into our feeling for nature we 
shall be less sensitive about the unnaturalness of 
these informal rows of trees and shrubbery. The 
agricultural landscape is in reality one of the great 
topographical types, and one which we must learn 
to appreciate more highly. 

Mass planting is a comparatively new discovery 
in landscape gardening and marks one of the great- 
est advances yet made toward a genuinely natural- 
istic style. The use of trees by the thousands for 
screens or backgrounds, the introduction of rhodo- 
dendrons by carloads for underplanting, the devel- 
opment of considerable forest tracts as elements in 
pictorial landscape treatment, these are all good 
examples of mass planting. We may have mass 
effects on a much smaller scale than this, however. 
Without splitting hairs we may define a mass as a 
group of such extent that its limits are not all vis- 
ible from some chosen point of view. 

Mass plantings are of two kinds, pure and 
mixed. Pure masses are composed of a single spe- 
cies or variety, mixed masses of several. The usual 
continuous border planting follows the mass struc- 



101 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

ture. 

The social group will usually be a mass planting, 
though some of the large groups, containing a dozen 
or more individuals, may be constructed on the 
social principle. This social or ecological principle 
is discussed at greater length elsewhere (see page 
51) so that for the present we need only call 
attention to it as one of the methods of group com- 
position. 

Having now considered the various types of 
groups from the structural standpoint it is impor- 
tant to discuss the relation of the group to the 
larger elements of landscape structure and to other 
principles of composition. 

It must be pointed out first of all that these vari- 
ous groups are all perfectly natural forms. Nature 
uses all these groupings. It is possible, as all of us 
sadly realize, to construct any of these groupings in 
a very unnatural and artificial manner; but it is 
possible also, no matter how difficult it may be, to 
present them in a perfectly naturalistic and agree- 
able character. In fact, the grouping of plants is 
one of the first principles in nature's own methods 



102 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 



of distribution. In a word, good grouping is abso- 
lutely essential to the natural style. 

Considering the group with reference to total 
structure we shall see that the unit group in the 
smaller works may constitute the entire paragraph. 
In other words, to develop a small garden in good 
paragraphic structure it may prove best to use only 
one group to each paragraph. Or certain para- 
graphs may have only the one group in each. In 
larger works there will usually be several or many 
groups to each paragraph. In short, the group will 
be a smaller unit than the paragraph. 

When several groups are used in any one para- 
graph they must obviously be much alike. This 
follows from the fact that they must all present the 
leading motive in a consistent manner, because it is 
the purpose of each paragraph to make a perfectly 
clear and unified presentation of some one phase of 
the leading motive. 

It will occur to all that any feeling of rhythm 
which our landscape compositions may possess is 
likely to be given through the appearance and reap- 
pearance of similar forms in successive groups — is 



103 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

likely to be a matter of grouping. Now the cor- 
respondence between music and landscape is very- 
close; and since rhythm plays so great a role in 
music we might expect it to be equally important in 
landscape composition. But this expectation is not 
wholly fulfilled. Repetition of similar elements — 
lines, forms, colors, species, — is indeed a very val- 
uable practice in landscape composition, and this 
repetition may be fairly regular and rhythmic. It 
is easy, too, to cite the great rhythms of Nature, 
particularly the round of the hours, of day and 
night, and of the seasons. Yet when we come to 
practical problems of grouping plants in informal 
composition it must be confessed that Nature's 
rhythms are too subtle for easy imitation. The 
landscape designer, sitting at his drawing board, 
with his nurseryman's catalog in his left hand, can 
not make much headway in his planting plans upon 
any rhythmic formula. Rhythm in the formal gar- 
den is a much simpler matter, for the formal garden 
is essentially rhythmic in its structure, like poetry. 
It is fairly evident that each group must have 
some character — some individuality. Otherwise it 



104 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

ceases to be a unit — it loses its unity. On the other 
hand it must not stand out with such prominence as 
to break the unity of the paragraph of which it is 
a part, or of the whole larger composition. Some 
artistic skill will be required, therefore, to balance 
these two tendencies. No rules can be made for 
matters like this. They are questions of taste pure 
and simple, and if a man has not the needful taste, 
he is not a safe designer. 

This much can be said, however, that, in order 
to give any group any individuality whatever, or 
any intelligible meaning of any sort, it will always 
be necessary to follow the law of dominance. Each 
group must be commanded by some one species, all 
the other members being plainly subordinate. 
Thus one plant each of Philadelphus coronarius, 
Forsythia suspensa, Lonicera tartarica, Weigelia 
rosea, Rhodotypos Kerrioides, Viburnum lentago, 
Cornus florida, Spirea callosa, Cydonia japonica 
and Deutzia gracilis do not constitute a group in 
any artistic sense. Equal dabs of color out of sev- 
eral different paint tubes mixed on the palette do 
not make a color, but only a characterless gray. 



105 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

The only possible way to compose groups in land- 
scape gardening is to select one species for the 
dominating element in each group, and then to 
build the other material on to this controlling quan- 
tity. Naturally the dominating element will be the 
main factor in relating the group to its paragraphic 
control and to the leading motive of the entire com- 
position. 

No survey of Nature's methods of grouping 
would be complete without mention of a landscape 
form which classifies with difficulty into our poor 
human categories. This is the scattered distribu- 
tion which presents individuals, yet presents them 
in such constantly obvious relationship that the 
usual effect is not that of the individual, neither is 
it the effect of the mass. The most striking exam- 
ples of this are to be found in the scattered oaks 
along the hills which follow the Mississippi river 
from St. Paul to Cairo, and in the widely spaced 
pines on the pine barrens of central Florida. There 
are, however, hundreds of good examples of this 
scattering habit in the natural distribution of wild 
species. 

106 




WALK ALONG ROCK CREEK, WASHINGTON, D. C. 




CHESTNUT Tl(L\NKs. A^ LllLLiUL (..Uul I'l .\ l. 

Photographs by King and the Author 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

Usually this arrangement is wholly pleasing to 
the eye. The spiritual effect is characteristic and 
agreeable. It is unfortunate, therefore, that this 
method should have been quite generally overlooked 
by the men who make planting plans. It would 
seem to be a method capable of considerable service 
in informal designing. 

Old time debates about questions of grouping 
used to turn usually upon the shapes of groups, 
meaning their horizontal projection or plan. Some 
planters, whatever their theoretical principles, 
plainly made all their groups in a monotonously 
oval form. Hundreds of gardeners — and not all of 
them amateurs — still speak of "clumps of bushes" 
or of trees. Quite recently I visited a city park 
where the designing was professedly naturalistic 
yet in which the margin of an informal lake was' 
decorated with successive, equally spaced perfectly 
circular "clumps" of shrubs, each "clump" of a 
single species, but each one different from all the 
others. 

Earlier in this chapter reference has been made 
to the equilateral triangle which so easily becomes a 



107 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

conventionalized group form. An examination of 
any large number of planting plans will indicate 
how easy it is to fall into some set form of grouping 
and how very, very hard it is to learn that infinite 
variety which so bountifully blesses the works of 
Nature. I have often been especially impressed 
with the structural stupidity of the ordinary plan 
for an herbaceous border. It consists of a crazy 
patchwork of irregular spots of approximately the 
same size. The finished border cannot be anything 
except a sample book of the nurseryman's ma- 
terials. 

Now the remedies for this are three. Simplifica- 
tion — changing to a much simpler geometric pat- 
tern; dominance — the selecting of one or two spe- 
cies which shall be placed in so large a majority as 
to control the whole; pictorial instead of horticul- 
tural treatment — ^making of the border a unified 
picture instead of a collection of miscellaneous gar- 
den plants, however pretty and pleasing they may 
be. 

All these faults of grouping have one basis in 
common. They all result in part from the perni- 



108 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

cious habit of studying planting plans in the flat, 
in plan on the drawing board. Every designer at 
his drawing tries of course to visualize his group. 
He tries to imagine how it will look on the ground. 
He tries to picture it in its vertical projection. But 
the case is a good deal like that called to mind by 
Josh Billings when he said, "All men aim to tell 
the truth but some of them are almighty bad shots." 
All men try to imagine their groups in their finished 
perspective, but unfortunately many designers suf- 
fer from defective imagination. 

There is some point to the contention which I 
have heard from the lips of infuriated landscape 
gardeners that no man should be permitted to draw 
a planting plan on paper. It might be better, were 
it practicable, to do all designing on the ground. 
The landscapist could then put his materials in 
their proper places in the picture, much as a painter 
puts a touch of red here and a stroke of orange 
there, feeling his way slowly to the finished result. 

Certain it is that all grouping should be studied 
with least emphasis upon plan and much greater 
attention to vertical projection, and this feature can 



109 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

be judged much better in the field than in the draft- 
ing room. The effective development of sky-lines 
can hardly be reached in any other way, yet effec- 
tive sky-lines are indispensable to good landscape 
workmanship. It need hardly be remarked here 
that the designing of good sky-lines is intimately 
involved in the placing of groups and in the order- 
ing of paragraphs. All these studies go together. 
Whether the sky-line be long and level or sharply 
serrated it must harmonize with the principal 
theme. If it has a vigorous rhythm it must cor- 
respond with the rhythm of the structural para- 
graphs and their component groups. Whatever 
rationale may be discovered in the designing of the 
sky-line must be founded on the principle of the 
leading motive, the paragraphic structure and the 
development of the group. 

Thus far we have considered the art of grouping 
only with reference to the external form and inter- 
nal structure of groups. At least two other mat- 
ters require attention in this connection, viz., color 
and texture. 

Much has been said about color harmonies and 



110 



The Natural Style in La7idscape Gardening 



color effects in the garden — much more, indeed, 
than the matter warrants. Color plays such a very 
important part in some other closely related arts 
that beginners naturally try to follow the same 
well-marked paths in garden designing. Frankly 
this color scheming in the garden seems to me to 
have been greatly misunderstood. There is a dan- 
gerous facility in the assumptions that gardening 
is merely a decorative art, and that it may therefore 
follow all the rules of the other decorative arts. 
Neither assumption is quite half true. The infer- 
ences and practices which follow in this train of 
reasoning are frequently altogether wrong. 

Under the first head let it be stressed that gar- 
dening is a structural art, like architecture. The 
purely decorative work put upon a church or villa 
is its least important feature. The architect is con- 
cerned mostly with foundations, the distribution of 
loads, the requirements of heat and ventilation and 
all that sort of thing; even the esthetic value of the 
church building is gained more by structural mass 
than by decorative detail. The art of gardening 
stands precisely where architecture stands in this 



111 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

respect, and the one who thinks of it merely as a 
scheme of superficial ornament hasn't come within 
glimpsing distance of the main idea. 

Nevertheless there are many situations where the 
garden, having been built in all structural sound- 
ness, presents a pretty field for purely decorative 
treatment. At this point our second group of mis- 
understandings must be forestalled. These rest, as 
has been suggested, upon the assumption that the 
common practices of decorative art may be trans- 
ferred without redigestion to use in the garden. 
Take the color scheme as an example. It is one on 
which hundreds of respectable men and thousands 
of intelligent women have gone wrong, — men and 
women of the right sort — sound on the suffrage, 
who go to church, who know what eugenics is and 
who love their neighbors reasonably. 

These good people have learned (but not in gar- 
dening) that the color scheme is the greatest scheme 
in the world for securing unity of artistic effect. 
Millicent spends the nights of her girlhood in a 
pink bedroom developed by her own good taste; 
she adopts another color scheme for her trousseau ; 



112 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

she has her new dining room done in rich browns 
and her limousine in blue. If she gives a party, a 
dance, or a dinner, the color scheme has to be de- 
cided before the menu or the music. Why shall she 
not, in the garden, where all sorts of beautiful 
colors are placed at her disposal, mass them in tri- 
umphant color effects? 

Perhaps she should, but there are important 
points first to be taken into account. At the outset 
she should consult with nature who will have much 
to say about the results whether she be asked or no. 
Now nature has a color scheme of her own for 
every garden. Her ideas run very emphatically 
to green. She is hke the famous fireman who 
didn't care what color they painted the hose wagon 
just so it was red. Nature seems willing to let 
Millicent adopt any sort of color scheme in the 
garden just so it is green. And after the dear 
girl has spent years of effort on her pink garden 
she one day begins to realize that all the pink she 
has is a few faint splashes of color on an acre of 
rich velvety green background and under a bright 
blue sky. Nature has been laughing at her all the 



113 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

while. 

At sundry times and in divers places it does seem 
indeed as though the good old mother gardener 
would try some novel color effects of her own. She 
does occasionally spread out those miles upon 
miles of yellow California poppies, or cover a state 
like Kansas with sunflowers, or fill the French 
fields with poppies glowing scarlet, or delight the 
Germans with some acres of cyanin-blue kaiser- 
blumen. But mostly she comes back to the greens, 
the grays and the gray-greens, — and always with 
that inevitable blue sky overhead. Her pinks and 
reds and blues and purples — colors which if put 
into Millicent's dining-room would wreck the house 
— she throws about quite carelessly and promis- 
cuously. The most incompatible colors are set out 
together just as though they had passed the censor- 
ship. At this sort of thing nature beats the neo- 
impressionists, the cubists, and the militant suf- 
fragists. 

The fact is, of course, that these miscellaneous 
colors are actually harmonized by Nature, and by 
such heroic means as the artists never could com- 



114 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 



mand. She uses first that never-failing background 
of cool green which absorbs so much of the con- 
flicting colors that there is little left to offend the 
eye. And then over all there pours the bright sun- 
shine from heaven out of that warm and infinite 
sky ; and that brilliant sunshine, while it makes the 
individual colors more vivid, catches them up in 
such a quantity of white light that they are all 
brought into solution, as it were, and are effectively 
blended in spite of all their antagonisms. So it 
happens that color combinations which would seem 
wild and savage in the subdued light of Millicent's 
boudoir pass gloriously unchallenged out in the 
white sunlight under the open sky and against that 
quiet background of green. 

Even at that, I am often tempted to feel that our 
super-civilization has made us too finicky about 
colors. A whole lot of the rules and regulations 
which are supposed to govern colors seem very arbi- 
trary, and are the invention of man rather than a 
wise interpretation of nature. After some years 
of impeccable existence amongst the most delicate 
and refined color modulations we suddenly find an 



115 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

Indian blanket brilliant with the loudest yellows, 
reds, and blues, but beautiful beyond all gainsay- 
ing. Or we get a shelfful of old Bavarian peasant 
pottery, or we see the Swede girls in their native 
costumes, and we are lost in wonder that anything 
so absolutely opposed to our teaching can be so 
thoroughly good. For a moment we may have a 
suspicion that nature knows her own game as well 
as we do, and is quite as willing to have the world 
beautiful in her own way as after any manner 
which we can teach her. 

Even the artists themselves sometimes attempt 
the use of raw colors. One has only to visit the 
modern art shows to see that some of the most 
thoughtful workers have decided that white light 
and the human eye can be depended on to resolve 
the primary colors into harmonious effects even 
where a scientific analysis might demonstrate their 
utter incompatibility. 

All of which is respectfully submitted to show 
why, whenever I hear of some precious lady who 
is going to make a pink garden or a purple garden, 
I look the other way and smile. It would be too 



116 




HILLSIDE GARDEX. GROUNDS OF THE MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURAL 
COLLEGE 

Designed, executed and photographed by the Author 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 



much to say that questions of color can be wholly- 
ignored in gardening. The truth is simply that 
they have to be treated quite differently from the 
way they are managed in millinery. Thus, as I 
reason out the situation, I would decide that, while 
color patterns may possibly be worked out to a 
qualified success in the formal garden, there is small 
opportunity for anything of this sort in the natu- 
ralistic informal garden. 

Shrubs and trees show differences in color, to 
be sure; and in the art of grouping one must see 
that inharmonious colors are not placed side by side, 
either in the same or in adjoining groups. There 
are wide ranges of value in greens — a whole gamut 
between the light gray greens and the dark blue 
greens; — and very rich, though delicate, modula- 
tions are possible within these limits. Here is where 
the landscape gardener can be as subtle as he 
pleases. 

For the most important consideration we may 
adopt a negative rule, viz., avoid all unusual and 
unnatural colors. In naturalistic gardening such 
plants as Pissard's plum, Schwerdler's maple and 



117 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardemng 

the variegated weigelia should be used most rarely 
or never at all. 

To this may be added one simple rule, as follows : 
Use the brightest colors, when they are used at all, 
in the distance, medium colors in middle ground, 
and the softest colors in the foreground. 

This method, it should be clearly understood, is 
applicable only in purely naturalistic gardening on 
lands of considerable extent. In small gardens and 
in the areas about dwellings, club houses, etc., colors 
may be handled quite differently. The scheme of 
color planting recently presented by Professor 
R. R. Root, which seems on its face to contradict 
the principle here laid down, is in reality effective 
and appropriate in these smaller, more refined, 
more humanized (and nearly always more formal- 
ized) places. 

Textures in naturalistic planting are usually 
more important than colors. By texture in this 
connection we signify the size and character of 
foliage plus the habit of twig growth plus pretty 
much the whole habit of the plant. Plants of dif- 
ferent habit of growth should rarely be combined 



118 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

in the same group unless a definite contrast is de- 
sired and achieved. Textures of twig and foliage 
should be quite as carefully harmonized as colors. 

In general, too, we may safely follow the rule 
of placing the coarsest textures in the background 
and the most delicate textures in the foreground. 

In special cases very coarse and very fine textures 
may be brought together for purposes of contrast, 
remembering always that in art harmony should 
prevail and contrast should be the exception. Fre- 
quent contrasts in any work of art soon lose their 
force and become tedious or even obnoxious. 



119 



FEATURES AND FURNISHINGS 

TWO good reasons why the formal garden 
has sometimes appealed more to the popular 
mind than has the informal garden are, first, 
that the former has possessed more features of 
striking interest and, second, that the formal gar- 
den has often been better supplied with the furni- 
ture necessary to make it humanly habitable and 
usable. The informal garden, in a word, has too 
often been featureless and unfurnished. These 
faults ought to be corrected. 

It is the business of the landscape gardener to 
supply these desirable features. He must find them 
on the ground, develop them, invent them, create 
them — provide them by the main strength of his 
artistic genius. Some little study in this field may 
show perhaps that the possibilities are as great for 
the naturalistic garden as for the most architectural 
enterprise. 

First of all the landscape designer should utilize 



120 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

to the utmost all the natural scenery. Every good 
view, within or without the park or estate, should 
be fully developed. This development will require 
at least three things : First the line of the best view 
must be determined and kept open; second, this 
view must be framed by suitable plantings; third, 
inferior views must be blocked out or reduced to 
mere promissory glimpses. 

As a rule such special views require further to 
be fixed, marked and advertised by placing at the 
optimum point of observation an appropriate seat, 
carriage turn, rest house or some similar accessory. 
Thus the stranger is directed unmistakably to the 
main feature, the desirable vista or the glorious 
outlook. 

In formal garden design it is considered abso- 
lutely obligatory that each axis shall terminate upon 
some adequate object. Similarly in informal design 
each vista should terminate clearly and definitively 
upon some satisfactory object. There should be 
some hill, mountain, lake, church spire or other 
definite object of interest or beauty upon which 
the open vista clearly centers. To build up a long 



121 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

vista with nothing at the end of it is like hanging 
on the parlor walls a frame without any picture 
in it. 

In grounds of any considerable extent there are 
usually natural features which can be played up 
by the intelligent designer. A brook, no matter 
how small and mean, offers unlimited possibilities. 
If there is only a trickle of water in it one can set 
back certain stretches so as to make reaches of flat 
water on which the shadows lie and on the margin 
of which all manner of aquatic plants will thrive. 
Then there will be alternating stretches of water 
singing over stones or flashing in the sun. Foot 
bridges or stepping stones at suitable points add 
to the picture. There may be seats in shady nooks 
from which one can watch the panorama of life 
upon the brook; while at other points there will 
be sunny, grassy glades opening back into neigh- 
boring meadows or looking out to adjoining lawns. 

In other grounds there will be natural ponds 
or cliffs or outcrops of rock or glacier-planed 
boulders or old plantations of pine or oak. Every 
such feature must be seized upon and developed 



122 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

with skill and imagination. Some heroic landscape 
makers even create such features for themselves. 
They make artificial ponds and rivulets, even arti- 
ficial hills. One of them of whom I know, instead 
of building a concrete retaining wall to stop the 
erosion of a troublesome storm-fed gully, preferred 
to reproduce a complete outcrop of limestone ledge, 
stratum on stratum. Such work, of course, must 
be very skillfully done or it is anything but natu- 
ralistic. But when it is artistically successful it has 
every right to be called good naturalistic landscape 
gardening. 

Natural growth of good trees or artificial forest 
plantations always make good landscape features, 
and should be joyfully accepted in works of the 
natural style. Even a single tree of any size or 
symmetry can be emphasized by proper vistas and 
may be worth using as a feature. The planting of 
specimen trees and shrubs on all sorts of grounds 
has unquestionably been badly overdone in early 
examples of American landscape gardening. This 
particular trick may fairly be reckoned as a fault 
of the late Andrew Jackson Downing and of his 



123 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

less capable disciples. Specimen planting must be 
done with great restraint; yet within judicious 
limits it is wholly proper and effective. 

It need not be forgotten, either, that to many 
sane and cultivated persons a garden is still a place 
where plants grow — where trees and shrubs and 
flowers are to be enjoyed. M-Suny good people still 
admire plants, and to them no possible exhibition 
of architecture, statuary or ceramics can take the 
place of good maple trees or blossoming lilacs or 
masses of blue larkspurs. The unlimited wealth of 
all the nursery catalogs is at the command of the 
designer who is ready to cater to this amiable and 
legitimate taste. There are literally thousands of 
interesting plants which can be employed to make 
a garden a place worth visiting. These embellish- 
ments, too, have one indubitable advantage over 
the sun dial and the pergola, in that they change 
from week to week and day to day. The garden 
which is ablaze this month with poppies may be 
just as glorious next month with peonies. The gar- 
den which emphasizes features of this sort has a 
wide versatility. 



124 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 



Even collections of plants are not wholly inad- 
missible. The "pinetum" and the "orangery" and 
the "rosarium" are perfectly good ideas, in spite of 
their factitious origin and sometimes juvenile treat- 
ment. One garden that I know has specialized in 
lilies, and another contains every species of fern 
which an enthusiast and an adept can grow. It is a 
great experience to see a hundred varieties of 
peonies or dahlias or gladioli all together. One 
might travel far for the opportunity. 

Such features are worth putting into gardens; 
and for the present one need only be reminded that 
over-planting and the making of collections have 
ruined more gardens than they have made in 
America. The landscape gardener who would make 
much of these elements in his work must be a man 
of power, that is, a man of great self-restraint. He 
must be a designer to whom the initial plan is clear 
and sacred or else he will very soon lose all sense 
of design in his enthusiasm for his horticultural 
collections. 

Sometimes these collections of plant materials 
may be turned to a special purpose and become 



125 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

thereby new sources of interest and pleasure. For 
instance, a bird garden. Persons who are fond of 
flowers and of gardens (and not too fond of cats), 
are apt to be fond of birds also. The cultivation 
of birds opens up new and interesting possibilities 
in gardening. There will be plantings of viburnum, 
roses, mulberries and other materials on which the 
birds feed; there will be bird baths; there will be 
picturesque little bird houses ; and, most interesting 
of all, will be the birds themselves. If one can have 
in one's garden a catbird and a thrush, a humming 
bird, two robins and a song sparrow, it will prove a 
great addition to the columbines and sweetpeas. 

A bird sanctuary is obviously a very appropriate 
feature for the grounds designed in the natural 
style. 

And speaking of birds we should pause to em- 
phasize the fact that any living moving animals 
in a garden or park add enormously to the general 
interest. The old English parks often had deer 
running at large. I once counted three hundred 
beneath the dining-room window of an English 
country house. A few sheep on a park lawn will 

126 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 



be photographed hundreds of times every week, 
thus demonstrating their pictorial appeal. Some. 
Jersey cows are almost as good. Most park super- 
intendents try to have a variety of water fowl — 
ducks, geese and swans — on their park lakes. All 
this is perfectly good landscape gardening. 

Then there is the garden theater or players' 
green. Most of the outdoor theaters recently con- 
structed in America have been of the emphatically 
formal extremely architectural type. They have 
often been called "Greek" theaters. But neither 
the Greek theater nor the garden theater need be 
characteristically architectural. The classic Greek 
plays were probably presented originally amidst 
very informal surroundings, under the trees, on 
bits of fortuitous lawn, or even in the street. The 
architectural Greek theater and the big Roman 
circus belong to a later and possibly less artistic 
period. 

Certain it is that the modem outdoor theatricals 
which have been most successful have been very 
informally presented amidst characteristically in- 
formal garden surroundings. In this list would 



127 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

come the famous performances of the Ben Greet 
Players, the Coburn Players, etc. In the same 
connection it is to be remarked that the many suc- 
cessful pageants given in America of late years 
have nearly all been staged in landscape settings 
of the most pronounced informality. These facts 
are pertinent and important. 

As a problem in garden design, it is wholly 
feasible to make a garden theater or players' green 
of the most informal character. It may be fitted 
so snugly into the garden or into the woods or 
against the stream bank that every one would sup- 
pose it to be wholly the work of nature herself. 
There is not space here to discuss the whole com- 
plicated technic of outdoor theater design; but it is 
a matter which the proficient landscape gardener 
may be expected to understand and to practice. So 
here is another feature of vital human interest which 
may add to the charm of the naturalistic garden. 

Another special feature which seems peculiarly 
appropriate to the naturalistic park or garden is the 
campfire. The campfire is a peculiarly American 
motive, associated with our long years of pioneering. 



128 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 



From the Atlantic to the Pacific our civilization has 
been carried forward by a long relay of campfires. 
Thousands of men and women now living unsus- 
pected in the haunts of urban luxury have taken 
their turns beside the evening blaze or cooked their 
ration of bacon in the frying pan. That was a 
shrewd observation made by David Harum at New- 
port when he offered to bet a quarter that, on the 
shore drive, he could make one-half the millionaires 
duck their heads by shouting suddenly "low 
bridge !" Even those who have not personally lived 
the camp life have had father or mother or uncle 
whose stories of the early days have fired the ten- 
derest springs of imagination. 

Moreover camping, even where it has long been 
given up as a mode of life, persists as a glorious 
and popular sport. Thousands of men and women 
go camping annually for their vacations to the 
Adirondacks, to Canada, to the Rocky Mountains; 
and there, during the happiest days of all the year, 
they sit and smoke and dream and cook by the 
birchwood blaze. The great majority of sound, 
healthy and really cultivated persons in this country 



129 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

know something from personal experience of the 
campfire's charms. It is not hard to beheve that 
such persons would find a garden campfire on their 
own grounds an appealing reminiscence of happy 
experience. 

The garden has long been recognized as a happy- 
blend of those great elements of earth, air (or sky) , 
plant life and water. The practical necessity of 
water in some form in every garden has been over- 
looked at times, particularly in Amierica, and par- 
ticularly by designers in the American natural 
style. Just here they lost a point to the formal 
designers who nearly always found room for some 
fountain or pool. Now in this blend of elements 
fire may have its place as well as earth and sky 
and water, and its human appeal is just as primitive 
and just as strong. 

Fire indeed is the one of these elements which 
has oftenest been worshipped by men. Even the 
professors of the purer and more spiritual religions 
have frequently used fire in their sacrifices and 
ceremonials; and the flame upon the altar or upon 
the domestic hearth still appeals to us as a definite 



130 




A GARDEN CAMPFIRE. THE AUTHORS GARDLM 

Planned, executed and photographed by the Author 




MOUNTAIN TRAIL 

Photograph by the Author 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

expression of divine mercy. 

There is also the pictorial effect to be considered, 
for a garden is made partly to be looked at. Now 
a campfire against a dark background of trees, in 
the dusk of the evening, with its inviting flicker of 
flame and its up-curling thread of smoke, makes 
about as fetching a picture as the garden artist 
can ever hope to compose. The quiet evening after- 
supper hour is often the very best one of the day 
in the garden. It is the hour when the family can 
be together and when intimate friends can drop in 
for a word of gossip. 

The technical methods to be observed by the 
landscape architect in installing the garden camp- 
fires need not be wholly overlooked. It is to be 
observed first that, as this motive comes from the 
pioneer life or from the vacation experiences in the 
wild woods, it harmonizes best with the wilder 
aspects of landscape gardening. The campfire 
should be relatively remote from the house, in the 
most informal part of the grounds, and should have, 
if at all possible, its background of tall, dark trees. 

It is good art, furthermore, to associate the camp- 



131 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

fire with water, either the level pond or the running 
brook. The typical camp-site must be beside a 
stream or lake; and thus the associations aroused 
by the one are intensified by the other. And, more- 
over, the pictorial effect of the flame reflected in the 
still water is well worth planning for. 

It should be understood that a garden campfire 
is not a bonfire. Indeed a blaze the size of a teacup 
is frequently all that is desired. All the furniture 
necessary in providing for this is a bare bit of earth 
six feet in diameter, though a few rough stones 
laid into a loose pavement, with two central stones 
on which to place the fuel, make a convenient 
arrangement. A simple flagging of cement may 
be laid, but this verges rapidly away from the rustic 
informality appropriate to the scene. 

Some comfortable seats ought to be provided in 
connection with every campfire. These should be 
as simple and plain as possible, harmonizing with 
their surroundings. 

Statuary in bronze, marble or plaster, has been 
used many times in naturalistic gardens in Europe 
and America. It must be allowed that in a few 



132 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

cases these experiments have been successful. They 
have proved that it is possible to find plastic figures 
or groups which will fit artistically into a natural- 
istic or semi-naturalistic environment. More than 
that could hardly be claimed; and it would have 
to be understood that sculpture of all sorts nearly 
always comports better with the formal garden. 

Aside from these special features of interest every 
garden, even the wildest, needs some of the furni- 
ture of civilization. The human man still demands 
his creature comforts. 

Whoever has gone house hunting, and, piloted 
about by the dapper agent, has wandered from 
one empty tenement to another, has acquired in an 
intense form the feeling which goes also with the 
unfurnished garden. The rooms are bare, blank, 
chill and cheerless. That place which, with a few 
chairs and tables, a picture and a ribbon, was a 
bright and habitable home, is now more dreary than 
a cemetery; and the dapper house agent reminds 
one painfully of the cheerful businesslike under- 
taker. The difference between a living home and 
a dead empty house of course lies in the human 



133 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

persons who daily inhabit the former. Yes, to be 
sure; but it seems to be in the furniture. The 
illusion is so powerful that no one can escape it. 
Even a dog feels it; and the dullest mind is sure 
to find that the house deserted by human beings is 
haunted by horrible ghosts. So strongly does the 
mind respond to this condition of desolation. 

All this argument carries over directly to the 
garden. For, though many people do not feel it 
nor make it true, the garden is just as much a part 
of the home as the library or billiard room. And 
the very reason why some folks do not find it so is 
that the garden, like the tenantless house, lies open, 
bleak and unfurnished, to the cold wind or the 
burning sun. This condition is commoner in 
American gardens than in those of Europe. In our 
land the garden seems to be considered solely a 
field of horticultural experiments, — a place to grow 
trees or shrubs or pretty flowers, — a spot to be 
looked at occasionally and admired rather than a 
place to be lived in constantly and enjoyed. 

To tell the whble truth, of course, it would be 
necessary to say that there are a few gardens in 



134 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

America which are over-furnished. For it is just 
as possible to overdo this work of gardening as to 
underdo it; and since the former is much the com- 
moner fault in American house furnishing we might 
possibly expect to see the same defect creeping 
into gardens. The overloaded gardens in this coun- 
try are mostly, on the contrary, the distinctively 
un-American gardens. Usually they are filled with 
European or Asiatic junk and are called Italian 
gardens or Japanese gardens. But these cases are 
exceptional, and may be passed over with this brief 
reference. 

The opposite mistake of leaving the garden bare 
of furniture is the common one with us. It is well 
nigh the rule, especially in our gardens made after 
the natural style. There are thousands of gardens, 
otherwise pretty well made, which haven't in them 
a single bench or chair or table or shelter, nor 
even a wheelbarrow to sit down upon should one 
desire to smoke or talk or watch a humming bird 
at the columbines. These gardens are as absolutely 
devoid of those conveniences which would make 
them habitable as the house which has only the 



135 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

paper on the walls. The notable lack of use suf- 
fered by our American gardens goes on all fours 
with this lack of usable furniture. In fact nothing 
would go so far toward popularizing our gardens, 
bringing them into steady use and making them a 
vital organic part of the home, as to fit them with 
suitable furniture. 

First of all there should be shelter. Instead of 
the pergola and the classical "temple" or "gazebo" 
or "music house," there may be the "arbor," the 
"summer house," the "log cabin," the boat house or 
the fishing lodge. There are just as many ideas — 
just as many motives, — amongst which we may 
choose in naturalistic gardening as in formal work, 
only we haven't so fully developed them. 

Such shelters, protecting against rain or sun or 
wind, enable tender persons to remain in the garden 
many hours when without them they would be 
driven in to the library or the bridge table. The 
typical American garden porch is a move in the 
right direction, but it ought not to be the last move. 

Wherever there are shelters there will nearly 
always be places to sit, but there ought to be ample 

136 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

temptation to linger and rest at other points in the 
park. Especially at those stations where good 
views are to be enjoyed, should there be ample pro- 
vision of seats. In the family garden there ought 
to be hospitable allowance of both seats and tables, 
such that meals may be taken, reading made easy, 
card games enjoyed, and so that those who want 
merely to sit and visit may find full opportunity. 

Amidst naturalistic surroundings the landscape 
gardener, of course, will not install the marble 
tables and seats of the big formal garden, but he 
will be able to provide substantial wooden benches 
and furniture of more or less rustic design. The 
extreme rustic fad of the 'fifties — twisted and con- 
torted tree stems grotesquely woven into settees 
or chairs — should be forgotten ; but the plain rough- 
sawed or hewn planks of more modern times, 
stained or weathered, are both appropriate in the 
picture and comfortable in the using. 

Such seats and tables, it has been suggested, will 
be placed where there are good views. A more 
exact, and at the same time a more comprehensive, 
rule would be to place them at the nodes in the 



137 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

design. Thus these help materially to emphasize 
the artistic paragraphs in which the design develops. 

Certain outdoor games may be provided for in 
the garden or the park, and such provisions help 
further to add interest to the place and to popular- 
ize the landscape gardening in a good and proper 
sense. Of these golf is the one game which prac- 
tically demands a background highly developed in 
the natural style. Golf in a formal garden would 
be less fitting than a dress suit on a fishing trip. 
But tennis, baseball, croquet, bowling, and other 
games can be nicely managed in naturalistic 
grounds of suitable size. 

In all northern climates special provision may 
very well be made for skating. This and other ice 
sports belong in the informal landscape almost as 
distinctively as does the game of golf. And, simi- 
larly, in larger grounds where water is present, 
arrangements can sometimes be secured for the 
corresponding summer sports, — such as bathing, 
boating and fishing. 

Yes, there are hundreds of things which the good 
designer can do to put life, interest and variety 



138 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

into his naturalistic compositions. The well- 
trained landscape gardener will have studied these 
items of his art and will know how to develop them 
with taste and discretion. 



139 



THE OPEN FIELD 

ONE does not need to be a partisan advocate 
of the natural style of landscape garden- 
ing to believe that it has a wide present 
usefulness and a glorious future. Let us, there- 
fore, avoiding all invidious comparison, try to esti- 
mate the special field of the naturalistic style. 

First of all let us remember that to the profes- 
sional landscape gardeners, in a rather special sense, 
is given the custody of the native landscape. This 
immeasurably precious heritage ought to be pre- 
served and passed on to succeeding generations in 
all its pristine loveliness. It may be modified here 
and there, forests may be cut, prairies plowed and 
cities built; but the beauty and majesty of the land- 
scape in its entirety need not be impaired. And 
adequate types of all pure landscapes will every- 
where be preserved. 

Elsewhere we have said that the work of the 
landscape amateur and of the professional practi- 



140 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

tioner is (1) to conserve the native landscape, (2) 
to restore the landscape where it has been need- 
lessly despoiled, (3) to improve and clarify the 
existing examples of native landscape, (4) to make 
the landscape physically accessible to all men, 
women and children, (5) to make it intellectually 
intelligible, and (6) to give spiritual interpretation 
to the landscape. This is a great and glorious 
charge. As we have said, it falls primarily upon 
the professional landscape gardeners; for if they 
do not understand and love the landscape, who 
shall? And if they do not labor to conserve and 
restore it, who will lift a hand? If they cannot 
improve and clarify it, who can? If they cannot 
make it physically and intellectually accessible, who 
will show the way? And if they cannot give it a 
spiritual interpretation then the whole effort fails 
at last. 

Now all these great duties devolve on all land- 
scape gardeners, but most especially on those who 
know and love the naturalistic form of landscape 
design. These duties will fall on these men some- 
times as matters of public responsibility. There 



141 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

will be many cases in which, as citizens, they must 
defend the landscape without hope of remuneration. 
There will be many cases, however, in which they 
will find congenial and profitable employment in 
these tasks. 

For one thing there will always be suburban and 
country estates and country clubs where private 
owners will require designs conceived and carried 
out in the natural style. In many cases these pri- 
vate commissions will involve the preservation of 
natural forests, lakes, islands and streams and their 
development to the best of their native character. 
This is the field in which all landscape gardening 
began, the natural style with the rest, — and it is a 
field which will never be exhausted as long as men 
make new homes. 

In the second place it is an error to suppose that 
the natural style, even in its extreme forms, is out- 
lawed in park design. Of course, it is no longer 
accepted without question as the only style for park 
design. We are now making our city parks into 
genuine recreation grounds. Recreation facilities 
have come to be altogether more important than 



142 




WHERE WOODS AXD 3IEADOW 31EET 

Photograph by the Author 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

landscape pictures, no matter how pretty the pic- 
tures may be. At the same time, however, all enter- 
prising cities are reaching out to equip themselves 
with rural parks — with large sections of wild land 
at relatively long distances from the crowded city 
section, — and these outer parks are to be real 
scenery reservations. They will still be devoted to 
recreation, but to the larger, quieter forms, such- 
as camping, boating, and fishing. In these parks 
the work of the landscape designer must lie in the 
direction of the most advanced natural style. 

Beyond these outer city parks will lie the country 
parks. There will be county and state reserves. 
Such reserves are now just being made by the more 
enterprising counties and commonwealths. State 
park systems will very soon emerge; and as there 
is a logical place for them in civilization, we may 
expect for them a large future. These state parks 
will be concerned chiefly with the conservation of 
large tracts of wild land, that is of native land- 
scape ; and the problem will be not only to conserve, 
but to improve these tracts and to make them 
physically and spiritually accessible. The only pos- 



143 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

sible treatment of such problems in the hands of 
the landscape gardener lies in the application of 
the natural style of design and development. 

Beyond the state parks lie the national parks. 
These already are a public asset of incalculable 
value. We have already taken over several millions 
of acres in national parks, including superlative 
types of some of our best American scenery, — and 
in that category I include, as a matter of course, 
the Canadian scenery and the Canadian national 
parks. A good many more of these national parks 
remain to be established. This movement is des- 
tined to go forward with vigor for another fifty 
years. In the meantime we shall discover that other 
great areas, held primarily as national forests, can 
serve most admirably all the purposes of parks 
without in the least impairing their usefulness as 
forests. Their park qualities will be developed 
accordingly. 

We have, therefore, in hand several millions of 
acres of national park lands (including the national 
forests and the national monuments), with other 
millions fairly in sight, and we are just organizing 



144 



The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 

a national park service to develop these unimagined 
resources in the public interest. This is an enter- 
prise worth more to the country than all the armies 
ever organized and all the navies ever built. And 
this magnificent enterprise will soon be in the hands 
of the landscape gardeners ; for who can deal with 
it except the men best trained in the love of the 
landscape and in the technical methods by which 
alone it can be conserved, restored, improved, clari- 
fied, made available and spiritually effective in the 
hearts of men and women? 

Yes, indeed, the natural style of landscape gar- 
dening has before it the greatest opportunities ever 
offered to any art at any time in the world's history. 
It is high time that this old, yet ever new, natural 
style received a more thoroughgoing study at the 
hands of all thoughtful persons, but especially by 
those who call themselves professional landscape 
architects. 



145 



INDEX 



INDEX 



Agricultural Landscape, 39 
Animals, 126 
Applications, 140 
Art of Grouping, 92 
Artificial Landscape, 123 

Birch Tree Motive, 67 
Bird Garden, 126 
Brook, Treatment of, 122 
Brooks, 37 
Brown, Launcelot, 14 

Campfire, 128 
Campfire Construction, 131 
Catholicity of Taste, 12 
Climatic Influences, 47 
Color Composition, 111 
Colors in Nature, 114 
Connecticut Motive, 70 
Country Clubs, 142 
Country Estates, 142 
Country Parks, 143 
County Parks, 143 

Division of Land, 75 

Ecological Grouping, 51 
English Style, 19 
Entrance Design, 74 

Farmer and the Landscape, 
30 



Features, 120 

Fire, 130 

Florida Pine Tree Motive, 67 

Forester and the Landscape, 

31 
Forests, 36 
Form, 20 

Form and Spirit, 43 
Furnishings, 120 
Furniture, 133 

Garden Forms, 20 

Garden Theater, 127 

Gardening, 33 

Geologic Forces, 46 

Golf, 138 

Group Forms, 107 

Grouping, 92 

Groups of Different Types, 

93 
Growth, 74 

Hills, 37 

History Motive, 71 
Hollyhock Motive, 68 

Indian Idea of Nature, 54 
Indigenous Species, 17 
Individuality of Groups, 104 
Informal Tree Row, 100 
"Illinois Way," 17 
Italian Style, 19 



149 



Index 



Japanese Style, 15 

Lakes, 38 

Landscape Conservation, 140 
Landscape Forms, 44 
Landscape Motive, 63 
Landscape Motive Defined, 

Langley, Batty, 13 
Laws of Grouping, 98 
Leit-Motiv, 64 

Literature of the Landscape, 
55 

Mass Planting, 49-101 

Miller, Wilhelm, Quoted, 17 

Mixed Groups, 97 

Motives, 63 

Motives Classified, 72 

Mountains, 35 

Muddy Brook Parkway, 69 

Music and the. Landscape, 56 

National Forests, 144 
National Parks, 144 
Native Flora, l6 
Native Landscape, 25 
Native Species, 49 
Natural Composition Sum- 
marized, 90 
Natural Forests, 123 
Natural Style Defined, 24 

Oak-Tree Motive, 66 
Outdoor Games, 138 
Outdoor Sports, 32 



Over-Furnishing, 134 
Over-Planting, 125 

Painters of Landscape, 56 

Paragraphic Development, 81 

Paragraphic Structure, 66 

Park Composition, 77 

Park Design, 142 

Pictorial Grouping, 108 

Pioneer and the Landscape, 
31 

Pitch-Pine Society, 52 

Plains, 35 

Plant Collections, 124 

Plant Materials, 48 

Plant Societies, 51 

Planting, 48 

Planting Plans, 109 

Players' Green, 127 

Power of Landscape, 26 

Prairie Motive, 69 

"Prairie Spirit in Landscape 
Gardening," 47 

Preservation of the Land- 
scape, 140 

Principles of Structural Com- 
position, 74 

Professional Landscape Archi- 
tect, 140 

Prose Composition, 65 

Rhythm, 103 
River Motive, 68 
Rivers, 37 
Rows of Trees, 99 
Rural Parks, 143 



150 



Index 



Scattered Plantings, 106 

Sea, 34 

Seats, 136 

Shakespeare Motive, 71 

Shapes of Groups, 107 

Shelter, 136 

Simplification of Groups, 108 

Sky, 29 

Sky Lines, 110 

Social Group, 102 

Soil and Moisture, 50 

Specimen Plants, 93 

Spirit of Beauty, 59 

Spirit of Joy, 60 

Spirit of Life, 58 

Spirit of Mystery, 60 

Spirit of Natural Landscape, 

21 
Spirit of Peace, 59 
Spirit of Power, 59 
Spirit of Reverence, 61 
Spirit of the Landscape, 53 
Squaw Birch Society, 51 
State Reservations, 143 
Structural Composition, 74 
Study of Landscape, 28-41 



Style, 18 

Subdivision into Parts, 75 
Suburban Estates, 142 
Summer Sports, 138 
Sunflower Motive, 68 

Tables, 137 

Termination of Vistas, 121 

Textures, 118 

Theme, 6S 

Topography, 45 

Triangular Grouping, 107 

Types of Landscape, 34 

Unity of Theme, Q6 
Universality of Landscape, 27 

Vacation in the Landscape, 

32 
Vegetation, 47 
Vistas, 121 

Water, 30 

Water in the Garden, 1 30 
What is Meant, 11 
Winter Sports, 138 



151 



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